


A Kindness of Ravens

by Deborah Laymon (dejla), dejla



Series: Gods, Saints, Sinners, and Furies [2]
Category: Highlander: The Series
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-03
Updated: 2010-06-03
Packaged: 2017-10-09 21:40:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 56,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/91890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dejla/pseuds/Deborah%20Laymon, https://archiveofourown.org/users/dejla/pseuds/dejla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the Horsemen died at Bordeaux… What happened between Methos and Duncan? What happened between Methos and Cassandra? And how did Amanda end up in the middle of it? Six degrees of Immortal separation plus a thousand regrets... Equals a meltdown on Holy Ground, somewhere in France.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Kindness of Ravens

**   
A Kindness of Ravens   
**

**2 March, 1997**

An elderly train, riddled with squeaks and rattles, grumbled along the narrow-gauge branch line carrying her the last few miles of her transmigration from Bordeaux. It had taken her days to decide she needed somewhere and someone who could help her find some peace — Duncan could not supply that now. It required maps and tickets and more than one train connection to find her way to asylum.

Now and again, she dozed, only to jerk awake gripped in nightmares:  foul things that vanished as soon as her eyes opened, yet left her sick and shaking. In the late afternoon, the train paused at some station not much larger than the one for which she waited. From the slovenly girl in charge of the grimy counter, she bought bitter black coffee and stale brioche, and one desiccated, lopsided orange. The station clock ticked steadily for four minutes, then paused on the fifth as if it would never find the energy to move again – and then slapped into the fifth minute, paused a second, and ticked off another steady four minutes. If she’d had to listen to that for more than ten of the twenty minutes of the stop, she’d have been driven madder than she already was, so Cassandra took her lunch back to her empty carriage.

Several passengers disembarked. None joined them.

She counted it a victory, getting food past the knot in her throat. The orange surprised her:  beneath the thin, withered rind, warm sweet pulp burst within her mouth, flooding her with hidden sunlight. The other stuff lay sullenly in her gut. No matter; it stayed. The orange offered her a hope that the end of the journey would not be as stale as the beginning.

_And you thought yourself past believing in signs and portents._

Dusk slithered down in a grey fog and melted into black evening. The train at last stopped at Mirie-sous-Èsperanche. She stepped off alone into the cold night and the flickering single light above the closed ticket booth. Stood in the dark on the platform alone except for the bag brought from the hotel at Bordeaux. No interior lights welcomed her; she tried the doors and found them, as expected, locked. The phone kiosk responded neither to coins nor voice. It had been more than two years since she’d last come here, and she had no idea what might have changed in either the village or the mountain since then.

Faint rhythmic thumping heralded a motor, coming closer. Then, for one moment, the world paused. The little hairs on her arms and neck bristled with the warning of another Immortal approaching:  a soprano vibrato repeating scales, mingled with the brisk scent of pine trees and the rush of a cool crisp wind.

She knew that signature. Tears prickled in her eyes. Cassandra dragged the back of her hand across them.

Moonlight revealed a Citroën-Station stuttering to a stop by the platform. The car had been more than twenty years old the first time she’d seen it, and even mere moonlight revealed the further assault of the passing years. The driver’s door opened. Although she could not see a face, she knew the walk and she knew the voice.

“Cassandra?”

“Yes,” and to her shame, her voice cracked.

The figure took a few steps, then a vault up onto the platform, and Jehanne’s face became visible. “Ah, there, now.” Arms tough as oak branches surrounded her. “Did you think I wouldn’t know you were coming?”

She put her head down a moment on the sturdy shoulder. “I – wasn’t certain. I meant to phone, Jhenette –” and she had not meant to use pet names, not so soon after so long.

“_Ça ne fait rien_,” all in one breath, punctuated as always with a flick of the fingers. Jehanne said, “You are always welcome, and an unexpected pleasure is twice itself. Nonetheless – there are guests.”

Dismay choked her. She had somehow thought… no, once she had made the decision to come here, she had simply expected to have Jehanne to herself, to have space and time in the peace of the old abbey to try and absorb Bordeaux. “Immortals?”

“Yes, but nothing to worry about.”

“Do I know them?”

“I don’t think so. She is called Amanda. They’ve been with me — this is the fourth day.”

Cassandra turned the name over in her memory, trying for a face. Amanda was not an unusual name; but she had no Immortal connections to it. “I’ve known an Amanda or two, but not recently. And not one of us. And the others?”

“Other. Amanda calls him Adam, but he’s been ill and I’ve not done more than help cure the illness.”

“Ill? He’s a mortal?”

“No. Pneumonia. Viral, and a critical case of it.”

“Pneumonia? One of us, to be sick so seriously?” Had she ever had pneumonia? Well, yes, now that she thought of it. It had been a long time, though.

Jehanne held the passenger door open. Cassandra shoved the bag in behind the seat, then slid in on the worn cloth. The door complained when she shut it, but it shut solidly. Jehanne climbed into the driver’s seat and slammed that door, as if it did not shut without a struggle. “Our kind does fall ill on occasion. I have treated plague as well as pneumonia.” She paused, shifted into gear, then added, “And died of both, as I recall. It seems as if the ills our flesh are not heir to are the wasting ones, the long ones:  tuberculosis, heart disease, cancer – AIDS. But the quick diseases, the critical ones – we’ve most of us no more immunity than mortals unaccustomed to them. Save that when we die of them, we come back to life.” She steered the vehicle along the long road spiraling up the mountain to the abbey. “But I have the first floor finished, and their rooms are at the end of east wing. You can either stay with me there, or be my first guest in the guesthouse. It even has central heating.”

“I thought the presbytery was first for central heating.”

“The roof over the middle of the east wing fell in. And then the guesthouse turned out to be so much cheaper to renovate that it seemed reasonable to do it first.”

“And I thought you’d have a little more money now,” Cassandra said. Too late she thought it sounded accusing. Jehanne gave so much of her worldly goods away, with no thought for tomorrow’s bills.

“The flowers of the field, _ma soeur_.” Jehanne took her hand off the gearshift and patted Cassandra’s knee. Then she blew out a breath and said, in a voice laden with embarrassment, “_À bon droit_, I have unexpectedly come into some money.”

“Really? How wonderful!”

“It is unnerving, rather. I have however committed a sizable chunk to the central heating, which is to be completed this summer.”

“Therefore the guesthouse.”

Jehanne shrugged, and flicked her fingers again. “I do not mind the simple life, and I have some small experience with poverty. However, I confess that I find it impossible to retain peace and harmony in my soul in the midst of builders tearing up floors and ceilings.”

“Well, thank god,” Cassandra said. “I’m glad to see there is some natural irritation in your serenity!”

“Ah, and she finds all my weaknesses, to be sure.” The engine hesitated, and Jehanne pressed down on the accelerator. The wagon surged and punched its way along the steep dirt road.

“A new road isn’t one of the projects?”

Jehanne snorted. “I much prefer a road that encourages strangers not to ascend.” Laughter lightened her voice. “As you can see, I have still not succumbed to sainthood. His Holiness would be most disappointed in me.” She tossed a quotation over her shoulder. “_If you came this way, taking the route you would be likely to take from the place you would be likely to come from, if you came this way in May time, you would find the hedges white again, in May, with voluptuary sweetness_[[1]](http://archiveofourown.org/javascripts/tiny_mce/plugins/paste/pasteword.htm?1274712429#_ftn1)...”

Cassandra considered it a moment, then smiled for the first time in days. She capped Jehanne’s quote. “_It would be the same at the end of the journey, if you came at night like a broken king, if you came by day not knowing what you came for, it would be the same, when you leave the rough road and turn behind the pig-sty to the dull facade and the tombstone_.”

“You know the ending to that stanza, don’t you?”

Cassandra stopped, and cocked her head, thinking. “It’s new —”

“It’s T. S. Eliot. Little Gidding. The **nineteen-forties**, Cassandra.”

“In the grand scheme of things, what’s fifty years? How does it end?”

_“And what you thought you came for is only a shell, a husk of meaning from which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled if at all. Either you had no purpose or the purpose is beyond the end you figured and is altered in fulfillment.”_

Cassandra straightened in the passenger seat. She peered through the faint glow reflected from the headlights, but could not define an expression. “Jehanne, are you all right?”

“_Oui_. Yes, I am. I’m — tired, I think. Just tired.”

“You’re certain I’m not going to be a burden on you if I stay?”

Jehanne’s hand, warm and hard, wrapped around her fingers. “_Ma soeur_, truly I tell you that having you here is a great pleasure. Only recently I have wished for intelligent concourse, and now God has answered my wishes — bountifully.”

“Isn’t it ‘be careful what you ask for, you may receive it’?”

The hand did not move away quickly enough to hide the answering shudder. Jehanne crossed herself. “That is _not_ a proverb I enjoy recalling.” The wagon hit a hole, and slewed, spraying mud.

Cassandra shut her eyes. She knew the road:  passable at the best of times, just bearable most times, and now, when winter claimed the valley, a nightmare of snow, ice, trees, and half-frozen mud. A tank might not have a problem, or a Humvee, but not too many mortals traveled in tanks, and Jehanne would have split herself laughing at the suggestion of a Humvee. The vehicle groaned again at the incline, then swerved through three hairpin turns in succession. _No, not a road to encourage casual travelers._

Then they passed the wards. The barrier broke over her in the way she might have parted a curtain, then fell around her like a warm silken second skin. The air itself smelt sweeter and felt warmer.

Holy Ground.

Safe at last.

*** *** ***

When the last lurch brought the Citroën onto the graveled square, Cassandra jerked awake, disbelieving that she’d fallen asleep for even that few seconds. Her heart hammered like a rabbit’s. She peered into the dark, saw artificial light flooding across the car park, and then, finally, the rest of her senses kicked in and she knew the scent of rosemary and lavender as Jehanne’s sachet. The engine shut off, and chill night air flooded in as the dome light cast cold light over passenger and driver.

Jehanne’s grey eyes, narrowed, dissected her. “How long have you been on the road?”

The days since seeing all but one of her remaining nightmares cut down blurred in her head; Cassandra tried to do a count on her fingers and came up with four different figures in as many tries. “I’m not sure. Two weeks, I think. But it might have been longer.” Days spent wandering before an impulsive decision to find the train route to the village — a day before she’d bought the ticket, since she had to stop overnight and do something about hygiene and rest. The nightmares interrupted the rest. It must have been ten or eleven days at least.

“Long enough, then.” Jehanne shoved the door open. “Leave your case; I’ll get it later. You need some chocolate and some sleep. Come on with me.”

Her knees surprised her, buckling as she put weight on them. She locked them to hold herself upright. “Every time I see you, you insist on feeding me. Keep it up and I’ll weigh as much as one of those doorposts of yours.”

“Bah.” Jehanne plodded to the small door at the right of the doorposts. It opened into a small square chamber, unlike the grand foyer which would have been revealed in entering by the main doors. Cassandra followed, lifting each foot with care; the rain she had pursued from Bordeaux had left the ground soaked and sticky.

Inside the mud room, Cassandra worked her way out of her wet shoes. The stone flags chilled her feet; she shifted from one foot to the other, rubbing one sole against the opposite shin in an effort to get some warmth through friction. The damp chilly wool of her trousers only increased the cold, and she shivered again as she struggled with her wet coat.

Jehanne worked her way out of her olive-drab wool trench and hung it up before she stooped, caught up a pair of open-backed slippers, and tossed them across.

“These should almost fit. Warmer than the floor,” Jehanne said. She leaned against the wall to tug off her boots, and shivered until she donned her own slippers. “In the morning I use a propane heater, but I didn’t think to start it before I left, sorry.”

“It proves I’m here. Don’t I always arrive in a storm?”

Jehanne moved behind her, reached up, caught hold of her dripping collar, and dragged the wet cloth away from her shoulders. Even wet, it had kept some of the stones’ chill away. Cassandra shivered.

“_Chérie_, have you considered a different calling card?” Jehanne hung this second sopping coat up to drip, then stooped to drag a solid black heater out from under a shelf. “Go through this door and down the hall — you can only go the one way to the front stairs…”

“I do remember how to get upstairs.”

Jehanne didn’t glance up from her crouch, only pulled out a packet of matches. “_Très bien_. In that case, I’m now in the second bedroom on the first floor, from the head of the stairs, on the right. The ceilings over the middle bedrooms are temporary, so I don’t use them. My bedroom will be warm, and there’s both a bath and a toilet. I’ll get you a nightgown as soon I’ve finished in here.” A brief crackle, and a match flared; the smell of burning paraffin flooded the room. Then Jehanne glanced up, eyes narrowed, and said, “_Alors_! Have you eaten?”

“I had a sandwich and an orange.”

A nod answered that. “From one of the stops, I suppose. I’ll bring something up with the chocolate when I come. The hot water has been fixed, so don’t be concerned — soak as long as you like. I even have some bath salts.”

“Practically sybaritic,” Cassandra said.

The heater sputtered and died. Jehanne waved a hand. “_Va-t’en_ — Off with you. I’ll be along in a bit.”

As she left, Cassandra heard another match scrape. She felt her way along the narrow hall, squinting in near dark, and emerged, momentarily blinded by artificial light, in the kitchen. A polished Aga cooker occupied the far wall, next to an open door. On the near wall, an ancient iron stove radiated heat, glowing embers visible through the vents. The combination peeled some of the cold from the room.

She rubbed her hands over the stove a few minutes, until her fingers felt less like icicles. Then she continued out of the other door, down another low-ceilinged passage, and into the entry hall.

Icicles on the beams above in the cavernous hall would not at all have surprised her.

Lamps near the entrances and exits cast shadows on the vaulted ceiling. Faded colors still marked the plaster, showing where murals had once been painted. Even with the shutters closed and draperies to shield against draft, the entryway still felt as icy as the March mud. Cassandra shivered as she hurried across the flagging to the staircase. It had been redone; the wooden railings held solidly together under her hands, and the stone steps no longer dipped in the center.

_No, not enough money for this and the central heating, I suppose. How long has she been here? Five years… no, more than that. Not ten, though._

Electric light greeted her in the upstairs hall. She blinked again in the radiance, stopped to get her bearings, and then found the second bedroom on the right. The door opened with little difficulty and no squeaks. New hinges.

This bedroom was much warmer than the corridor and the entry hall. The fire here showed both embers and fresh fuel, the wood crackling and sparking against a wrought-iron fireguard.  The lamp on the nightstand glowed over the tall posts of the bed.  A nightgown, turned half-inside-out, trailed from the edge of the bed onto the floor, as if discarded in a rush. Turned-back bedcovers, crumpled and naked, made haste even more obvious.

Tears prickled at her throat again, and Cassandra coughed to ward them off. _Jehanne mentioned a bath_. A side door led into a bathroom, with a nineteenth-century claw-foot tub and overhead shower. The water was boiling, and plentiful, and the bath salts sandalwood and roses. She allowed herself to sink into perfumed water and shut her eyes.

A creak. An intruder.

She jerked upright, splashing water over the tub sides. Her heart hammered, so far up in her throat she choked on bile and fear. _Where am I?_  Someone knocked on the door. Her mind thrust up the image of a cage surrounded by concrete and foul water:  a damp, stinking prison.

_“_Cassandra_, c’est moi.”_ A woman’s voice; Jehanne’s voice. “May I come in?”

She gulped air. The bristling hairs on her arms and the nape of her neck fell. “_Oui_. Yes, come in.”

This door also creaked, but it was Jehanne, short, solid, safe, who backed through the door. A folded robe and towels reached to her chin; in fact, she rested her chin on the terrycloth pile. “Did I startle you? I’m sorry.”

“_Ce n’est rien_ — It wasn’t your fault. I fell asleep.”

“A good thing to do if you’re in bed. Not so good if you drown yourself in the tub. Here, shall I wash your back?”

“Thank you.” She let herself drift again, and rested with eyes closed while Jehanne’s work-hardened hands massaged her knotted muscles, breaking apart the tension at joints and spine. The small hands brought up a sponge full of rose-scented lather and scrubbed on her shoulders. The texture of the sponge reminded her of Caspian’s uncut jagged nails on her skin before Kronos had pulled him away from her.

_At least Caspian isn’t one of those encounters I won’t be able to forget…_ She concentrated on Jehanne’s gentle touch, using it to shove back unwelcome memories of the Horsemen. 

But another memory intruded:  long, bony feet, bare and gritty with sand, under her hands. He had not been among her tormentors at Bordeaux. Not until it was nearly over had Methos made an appearance. In at the beginning… in at the end.

“Ah, now, little sister,” Jehanne said. “You’re safe. This is Holy Ground, and no one here will harm you.” Firm fingers massaged the nape of her neck. “Sit up; let me wash your hair.”

Cassandra submitted to water and shampoo. She allowed herself to be helped out of the tub onto a thick mat, and to be toweled dry until her skin glowed with friction. The robe was long enough, and thick enough, to be a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. She followed Jehanne out of the steamy bathroom.

The stone floor was chilly. The walls rose into shadow, pale pink and grey and painted with the flickering of the fire.

“I’ll get you a nightgown,” Jehanne said. The scent of lavender mixed with rosemary drifted across the room; the chest thudded shut. Jehanne tossed a gown:  long-sleeved, high-necked, with a square yoke and a narrowly-pleated front, onto the bed. “Throw me the robe. I’ll lay it over the chest.”

Cassandra bundled up the robe and threw it, then shivered in air cooler than the bath. The long thick flannel fell down over her body, wrapping her in fragrance and warmth. “Very eighteenth-century,” she said, rubbing the neck frill between her fingers. She buttoned the frilled cuffs. “But warm.”

Jehanne stripped out of her trousers and shirt, then sat on the chest to pull off her socks. Goosebumps prickled over her skin, and her nipples tightened. She shook out her nightgown, then dragged it over her head. “Portu… f’nel,” she said. Her head popped through the neck opening, and her brunette hair fanned out in a static halo.

“What?”

“Flannel. It’s cotton. From Portugal. It’s next to Spain.”

“I know where Portugal is,” Cassandra said, and smacked Jehanne’s knee. “You import cloth into _France_?”

“Flannel. I like Portuguese flannel. It’s thicker. And I have a seamstress in the village that I can put in the way of a little money, making me sheets and night clothes. Shall I stay with you? I’ve another room I can use, if you prefer.”

Cassandra pulled the covers up over herself. The white flannel sheets were still sweet with the scent of Jehanne herself, both sachet and soap-scented musk. “Stay with me?”

_“Bien sur que oui_[_**[2]**_](http://archiveofourown.org/javascripts/tiny_mce/plugins/paste/pasteword.htm?1274712429#_ftn2)_,”_ answered the pleasant alto. “Let me get this under there first.” Cold air swept under the duvet, quickly replaced with a hot-water-bottle wrapped in more flannel and radiating warmth.

The mattress jiggled; Jehanne slid under the pile of bedclothes.

“Your hands are cold,” Cassandra said. She closed her eyes, resting in the warmth and the perfume, as she reached out for Jehanne’s hands and chafed them, letting the warmth of her own water-heated fingers filter into her friend’s.

“Ah, well, better cold hands than cold feet.” Jehanne sat up in the bed.

“How did you know I was coming?”

Jehanne wrapped her arms around her knees, and laid her head down on her arms. “Your voice commands men,” she said, with a wry twist of her mouth. “Mine command me. Your chocolate’s on the nightstand, there. Drink it before it gets too cold.”

Not only a cup of steaming cocoa, but two thick slices of toasted _pain de campagne_ spread liberally with butter and melted cheese, sat on the earthenware plate. “I’m not really…” Her stomach rumbled. Well, so it was her head that didn’t want the food.

“At least the chocolate.”

The brown liquid had cooled to drinking temperature:  rich whole milk, not too much sugar, and the whole thing beaten until a thick froth rose like whipped cream and towered above the mug. One sip and her head retreated, leaving the field to her stomach. Cocoa and bread-and-cheese supplanted the memory of stale sandwich and sweet orange.

So Jehanne’s voices had said that she was coming? Odd, that she should be the focus of their interest… She set the empty plate down. “You aren’t going to —”

“It can wait till morning. Better now?”

“Yes.” She heard herself say, “You should have had children,” and winced. Having children was never discussed between female Immortals.

Jehanne cleared her throat. After a moment, she cleared her throat a second time. “I have run an orphanage or two in my days. And then my friends are kind enough to permit me to mother them.”

“It was a stupid thing to say, Jhenette. I’m sorry.”

“It’s no great matter, Cassandra. It was an honest thing to say, and that’s more important. Now, lie down and go to sleep. Morning comes soon enough.”

She lay back on the pillows and closed her eyes. Jehanne turned out the lamp. Cassandra tried to relax, tried to talk herself into sleep, but the tendons in her hands twitched, and her feet tingled, as if she still walked, even in dreams.

Jehanne rolled over and laid her arm across Cassandra’s ribs. “Sleep. Things will look better in the morning.”

“Things don’t always look better in the morning,” she said, as memories of rooms, beds and faces changing as she spoke to them, blotted out Jehanne’s face.

“No, not always.” One hand, now warmer than before, rubbed along the flannel sleeve. “But — _ce qui est fait est fait_[_**[3]**_](http://archiveofourown.org/javascripts/tiny_mce/plugins/paste/pasteword.htm?1274712429#_ftn3). And at least in the day one can see things clearly.” A pause, and then Jehanne added, “Unless, of course, it is foggy.”

Cassandra laughed. She laughed until the tears ran down her face, and at some point it was no longer laughter, but tears alone.

Jehanne rocked her and made soothing noises. Her strong peasant’s arms surrounded Cassandra like a fortress until exhaustion triumphed and Cassandra fell into a black emptiness without dreams, without memories, without men.

*** *** ***

Amanda heard the door shut across the hall.

Whatever Jehanne had gone out for seemed to be over.

Three a.m. was no time to wake from a sound sleep… She rolled over, and was asleep and into dream-memory almost at once.

_How long he’s been walking before he knocks on her door in Paris she has no idea. There is the buzz and then the knock, just after midnight, hauling her out of sleep then shocking her awake when she looks through the peephole. There he stands, hands in his pockets, drenched, water dripping from his hair into his eyes, rain spilling down all around him. All intelligent words desert her. She greets him with, “Where the hell did you come from?”_

_“Amanda, if I have to explain the facts of life to you after all this time ...” Methos says. As an attempt at black humor, it fails utterly._

_“Methos! You show up on my doorstep at one in the morning from God knows where —”_

_“Bordeaux.” He leans on the doorjamb, in his usual nonchalant manner. “Not all that far as the crow flies.” A second look, though, bares the extent of his exhaustion. He’s sagging against the door, holding himself up by applying himself to something more stable than he is._

_“You’re soaked! Come inside.” She drags him through the door. No taxi, no car — and he lets himself lean on her. More than that, he needs her to hold him up. Only at the worst times does Methos let anyone see a weakness. “Where’s your car?”_

_He stops, glancing back. Amanda hauls him in the last few inches, out of the last blasts of rain, and finds herself propping him against the wall while she shuts the door._

_He seems puzzled, for a moment. Then his expression clears. He says, sounding pleased with himself, “It stopped. I left it.”_

_“Why did it stop?” As soon as the words emerge, she realizes how inane they sound, and curses herself for getting lost — as she always does — in his surreal off-the-beaten-track forays._

_The pleased expression vanishes into blankness, then transforms into bewilderment. “I’m not sure. It stopped.”_

_Amanda looks at him again, feels his forehead, slick with rain and sweat and hot. She rests the back of her hand against the side of his face: even worse.  “You’re soaked,” she says again. “God, you’re burning up. Let’s get you into something dry and see if that helps. Is anyone after you?”_

_“Yes,” he says, then frowns and says, “No.”_

_“Which?”_

_The frown deepens to a scowl, and he rubs his eyes as if the light hurts them. “I don’t remember. I don’t know.” In a mutter she strains to hear, he says, “**Tous ceux qui prendront l'épée périront par l'épée**_   
[   
**   
**   
_[4]_   
**   
**   
](http://archiveofourown.org/javascripts/tiny_mce/plugins/paste/pasteword.htm?1274712429#_ftn4)   
_. We should all be bloody well dead by now.”_

_“Damn. Well —  dry clothes anyway for a start.”_

_He is as much help as a half-drowned cat, all boneless and jellyfish-limp, his arms and legs so much longer than hers that he might be a giraffe. The closest thing to a reasonable fit in clothes she can find are things left behind by Duncan — she hasn’t even remembered having them until she digs through a bottom drawer and finds a pair of well-worn jeans, a faded oversized sweatshirt, and wool socks. **Wool socks? well, yes, of course —the one thing Duncan will complain of is cold feet.** They are at least clean if not quite the right size. His feet are the only cold thing about him — she doesn’t have a thermometer; she can only guess at how high his fever is._

_Amanda sits back on her heels, glares at the man stretched across her divan, and sighs._

_“Methos. Methos, wake up. I need to talk to you.”_

_He focuses on her, one brief spasm of complete attention as unnerving as seeing a rattlesnake rise up out of the shadows. Rarely does she get the privilege of seeing him like that, and it is a privilege she’d gladly abjure. Then, his eyes close, having marked her as harmless. “Yes.”_

_“You said there might be someone after you.”_

_“Yes. I don’t think I was followed.” His eyes scan the room, blankly, and he struggles to sit up. “Safe. Have to find safe ground.”_

_She drops her head, groaning with frustration, then puts a hand on his knee and tightens her grip. “Come on, old man, this is important! If there’s someone after you, who is it?”_

_“She,” he says, almost intelligently, and his head lolls forward._

_Amanda swears under her breath in the earthy vulgar patois of her medieval past. “All we need, a disgruntled ex-girlfriend.” **Hell hath no fury and all that… **“Is she dangerous?”_

_“If MacLeod hadn’t stopped her…”_

_“But MacLeod’s not with you.” Her mind dredges up the unwelcome thought that no one she knows embraces depression quite as enthusiastically as Methos. Not even MacLeod’s brooding matches the old man’s rare landslides into gloom and withdrawal._

_She surveys the parlor, with its cherry-colored divan and white walls, the polished wood floors and the Kazakistan rugs. **Not here**. She can defend both of them against one Immortal stalker, but not against more than one ... If there is someone after Methos and if that someone is Immortal. Mortals are a less permanent problem in the long run, but major nuisances in the short._

_“Mortal or Immortal?” she mutters to herself._

_“Immortal,” Methos says suddenly, clearly, and explosively. “No reasoning with her. Tried to tell MacLeod.”_

_And Mac isn’t with him. Does that mean — “What about MacLeod? Is he all right?”_

_“I left him. She wasn’t there… Don’t know where she went…” He starts to shake with fever. “Gods-be-damned white knight.”_

_White knight:  and how well she knows Duncan in that mood.  She stares at Duncan’s denim jeans wrinkled over Methos’ knees and her fingers clutching it. His hand comes firmly down on hers, those long supple fingers talons digging into her flesh. The look in his eyes she hasn’t seen in years; worse than the despair and fear when Alexa was dying and he was trying to get the Methuselah Stone._

_“Who is she?”_

_No answer for a moment. He looks at her as if he doesn’t recognize her, has never seen her before. And then he says, “A raven. A raven to peck out a dead man’s eyes…”_

_“Oh, great. It’s got you quoting legends older than I am… All right. Let’s think of some place to put you until you come out of this.” Now that is a stopper ... where to stash a depressed and probably coming-down-with-something-revolting Immortal until he snaps out of the depression and gets over the something-revolting._

_Amanda exhales, then slaps his leg. “Can you stay with me long enough to let me get the car packed?”_

_“Going somewhere?”_

_“Somewhere you can rest. Safe.”_

_That gets her a short laugh. “No where’s safe. Not from her.”_

_A familiar face looms up in her mind, a young face belonging to maybe the one safe spot Amanda knows. “I know somewhere,” Amanda says, her tentative idea now fully sprung to life. Holy Ground and a doctor, and someone who can deal with this. If anyone can heal Methos in this state, Jehanne can._

_His eyes shut again, but he nods._

*** *** ***

Noises intruded into the room, distant voices, doors at the beginning of the long hallway shutting, then shutting again. Methos shifted. The mattress was soft. He remembered harder surfaces. Two women: he remembered two women, one familiar and one not, one dark-eyed, the other with eyes pale grey, like Athena’s statues. Pills and liquids and an occasional sharp stab of something in his thigh, or his arm, things easy to push away and forget. Competent hands, one pair scented, the other pair harder-skinned but gentle, dragging him up out of the fog.

_A thousand regrets, and all of them shadow him, starving hounds sniffing around his heels, ravens perching above him on skeleton branches, bright eyes watching his stumbling progress, waiting for him to fall._

_He wanders in a fog. A cloud of arctic mist clings to his bare flesh like a second skin of tar and feathers. As he fights his way through it, pieces peel free and icy wind hit the bare skin, freezing it on contact until the cloud touches down against his skin and coats it again. Sometimes the skin is bare just long enough for a raven to peck, to scratch the flesh and tear at it. He hasn’t strength enough to fight off the birds._

_Four points touch his forehead, benediction or recognition, warmer than the wind sweeping in to batter him. A blanket softer than down drapes over him, shielding him from the wind, thawing the fog._

_A whisper floats up from the blanket, swirling through the fog, and he strains to hear it. A voice he knew._

_He strains for the whisper, misses it._

_Too difficult to move, with the fog weighing him down. Something else weighs him down as well, some sense that moving will drag him out of the fog, and whatever waits out there for him is worse than the dry-ice-scalding fog._

_The whisper echoes again, nagging him. He shifts;  drops of icy water spill down the back of his neck. Movement. A vehicle moves around him. Not his vehicle:  sight cut through the fog a moment, reminding him of an automobile sputtering to a halt at the side of the road; he turns and walks away from the vision into the fog, walking away but walking toward —  something. Toward the whisper._

_It teases him again. He misses it once more; it dissolves into the fog. The fog itself begins to warm, as if the whisper is a slow flame. The fog parts; the whisper speaks once before vanishing again._

**   
_Methos._   
**

_Not much. A word. He hesitates in the fog, turning the two syllables over in his mind, hunting for sense to them._

_A name._

_Yes, of course. His name. Methos. He clutches the sound of it to him in the fog, holding it as an anchor. The sense of sanctuary bleeds through the fog, rocking him slowly and steadily, like a ship resting in a calm harbor._

**   
_Holy Ground._   
**

_Safe at last._

*** *** ***

Jehanne woke dazed.

Cassandra mumbled in her sleep, rolled over onto her stomach, snuggled into her pillow, and sighed.

_Morning_. Jehanne crawled out from under the covers. The embers gave out some warmth still. She poked at the fire, added some knots of wood, and waited until the flames crackled with energy.

She washed and dressed in the bathroom, trying not to wake Cassandra.

Wool trousers, a flannel shirt, and a heavy knitted sweater gave her warmth against the chill. The lug-soled boots had arrived the day before, and the leather was still new. She had to tug, and fight with the lacing, and ended up washing her face a second time before going downstairs for chores.

Put a pot on for coffee. Feed the cats, milk the cow — oh, Cassandra hadn’t met _la vache_ yet. _Wonder how her reaction will compare with Amanda’s?_ The rain still drove down over the valley, making the garden impossible. She said matins while milking, resting the side of her face against the warm body of the Guernsey. With her eyes closed, the scents of animal and farm flooding her nostrils, she said her _Paternoster_ and _Ave Maria_ and almost believed herself home and a half-thousand years ago.

The cow chewed her cud, grunted, and swished her tail.

Jehanne carried the milk to the shed cooler and set it inside. She pulled on her gloves and stopped for a moment, making a list in her mind.

First:  Cassandra’s suitcases.

She carried the bags upstairs, slipped into the bedroom, and watched her friend sleep for a minute.

All right:  chicken soup and bread would feed everyone suitably. She had an old hen in the refrigerator, and it would make good soup.

There was pleasure in hauling out the large pot from its majestic solitude, in pouring filtered spring water into it and hearing it splash against the metal. The new Aga heated more quickly than either the old cooker or the ancient brick hearth, and condensation on the pot sizzled on contact. Elek liked her cooking, and she enjoyed cooking for him. For herself alone, well... she didn’t do all that much cooking for herself. Boring. She chopped up soup greens and dumped two large handfuls into the simmering water. Two hours on that, at least.

_Now, do something about the mud we’ve tracked through the house._

She took a bucket out to the foyer and began the rhythmic job of scrubbing the mud off the flagging. Halfway through, she pulled off her sweater, sat back on her heels, wiped her forehead, and chuckled to herself. A little work and she never felt cold.

She made _cafe au lait_, dragged out bread and cheese and butter, and sat down at last to eat — well, an early lunch. Her head ached, and the coffee tasted bitter. Perhaps that cook of Nostradamus’ had been right and one needed a calm mind to prepare good coffee. Reaching for the bottle of cardamom pods in the center of the table, she dumped one into her palm, then crushed it into the hot liquid.

One of the five-week-old kittens crawled up her pants-leg, swayed wobble-legged on her knee, righted himself, and settled on crossed paws to purr. Jehanne ran her fingers over the spidery baby fur, reminded herself again to take Madame to the vet now that the kittens were weaned, and sipped the bitter coffee.

She fumbled for her beads, drew out the small leather folder with its Victorian silver medals of St. Margaret and St. Catherine and its ebony rosary, touched the small prayer book tucked into its inner pocket. Elek had been elated to find that for her — though rosaries or prayers meant nothing to him, it had pleased him to give her a present he knew would please her. The beads slid through her fingers, the wood worn silken-smooth, and her mind wound through the words of the prayers once more with the same smooth touch until she stopped, aware that the words had spilled emptily through her thoughts.

_God forgive me, I am tired. One night’s good sleep seems to make little difference._ She glanced at the silent phone, shook her head, and offered the kitten butter on the end of her finger. Cassandra’s reference to the voices came too close:  Jehanne never heard her voices when Elek was with her. But he had been gone for some time, and still she had heard no voices, only _nuits blanche_ — white nights — when she woke at odd hours and lay awake listening to the wind and rain sing. Listening for his harsh voice and his laughter that sounded older than anything she had ever known. It had rained now for a week. Elek had been gone — how long?

And he had left in a mood she hadn’t seen in centuries: ebullient, expansive, promising her surprises on his return — hinting of a future which would amaze her.

_I could well enough say I am glad to have him gone_. When he visited, the world itself seemed to vanish. At least when she slept alone, she slept well and without the distractions of sex and intimacy, and her voices accompanied her and balanced the world. But for those several days her voices still had not returned.

And then abruptly, a fortnight ago, she had woken from terrible nightmares to the sound of St. Margaret and St. Catherine, soothing her, lulling her. Talking her out of the nightmares until at last St. Michael stirred and spoke himself, and she knew that they were all with her again, that she was not alone and unforgiven.

But she couldn’t seem to get the sound of Elek’s voice out of her head. _‘**Viszlát**, Minette. I will be back soon. You’ll see.’_

She dislodged the kitten, setting it back in the basket with its brothers and sisters. Another month and they’d be ready for spaying themselves. The soup bubbled nicely. She turned down the flame as a matter of course and took a carafe of coffee and milk with her upstairs to the third floor. The study had less heat than the rest of the house. She flicked on the electric heater, waited long enough for the surge to settle, and then booted up the computer. The keys felt cold to the touch:  she accessed her Internet account and set her mailbot to retrieve while she warmed her fingers around a cup of coffee.

Her lists were slow today. She skimmed through them, deleted four, saved two. A couple of queries, cold — she needed to check those out with Vanya, have him find out how they got her contact. Here were — _merveilleux_, five! — from Vanya himself. Two men, three women. She transferred the e-mail to her database, noting possible routes to build IDs. In this day and age, being able to create identities and papers was even more necessary than during Napoleon’s paranoid years. Now it required care and the ability to build in bits of data, like chiaroscuro in a painting, to make an identity real.

Here was a request from Yannick, of all things.

“Not after the last time,” she said, and typed a quick, albeit polite, refusal. “Burn me once, shame on you; burn me twice, shame on me.”

She set up a search through the series of databases which she monitored for useful information, switched over to the news, but saw nothing interesting. Disconnecting the immediate link, and leaving the search to run itself until she collected it, she took the now-empty carafe and went back down to the kitchen.

Amanda, in sweater, wool slacks, and stockinged feet, leaned over the stove sniffing at the soup. Her current style included a brunette bob just above her shoulders, straight and smooth. She turned from the stove at Jehanne’s footsteps. “Smells good.”

“It’s only chicken soup.”

“From the doctor—chicken soup?”

Jehanne chuckled. Amanda always dragged her out of low moods. “I’ll have you know, _ma_ _couer_, that scientific studies do bear out old wives’ tales in this case. It’s not ready yet; sit down and have bread and cheese. And you can make soup. I’ve seen you.” She sliced up a fresh baguette and took cheese and butter from the refrigerator, set them on the table, then added plates and flatware. Cassandra would be down soon — she pulled another mug out of the cabinet and put it on the table as well.

“Ah, but when I can buy it and it tastes the same, why should I?” Amanda sat down at the deal table and swallowed _cafe au lait_ with a sigh of delight. “Yours, now, it tastes different. I can’t get something like it anywhere but here.” She began munching on bread smeared with chevres and butter. “How is he?”

“As well as can be expected. Do you know if he’s allergic to penicillin?”

A shake of the dark bob answered. “It never came up.”

“Some of us are.”

“Nasty.” Amanda finished her coffee and looked around in hope of more. Jehanne laughed; she brought the coffeepot and the milk to the table. “Tell me,” the older woman said, “what is the advantage of being Immortal then?”

With another smothered laugh, Jehanne poured herself more coffee. “Time. And the fact that most things are temporary for us.”

“Ah.” Amanda added more milk to her coffee. “And the disadvantage?”

“Mmm.” Jehanne swirled the chocolate-colored beverage in her cup. “Time. And the fact that most things are temporary for us.” She tried to find a lightness for her voice. “It’s a pity you’re not in trouble. I’ve come across some papers that would be perfect for you.”

“Keep them for me. I’ll probably need them.” Amanda’s eyes widened, as if thinking better of her answer. “Unless you need to get them off your hands right now...”

“I’m not likely to be raided, no, and I’m financially flush at present. Thank you for asking, darling.” Jehanne went to stir the soup. She came back to the table, leaned over, and kissed Amanda lightly. “How long have you planned to stay?”

“I don’t intend to simply drop Adam on you and then flee back to Parisian luxury. In spite of your lack of central heating.” Amanda peered into the coffee pot and sighed.

Jehanne reacted to the hint, and set about preparing more coffee. “Amanda, I love you dearly but you’ve been here in the country for four days. Your company delights me, as always, but don’t feel you must stay. He is improving.” She jerked her shoulder in the direction of the refrigerator. “And there is English Cheshire and Stilton in there as well as the Roquefort. Oh, and a very nice Double Gloucester. It makes a marvelous quiche.”

“I’ll have **you** know that along with being the best thief in twenty countries I have also learned to handle a sickroom **and** a household. Marie Antoinette I am not... I might choose to live in luxury, but I don’t need to.”

“_Touché_.” Jehanne leaned forward, fingers interlaced. “Did she really say ‘let them eat cake’?”

“Not exactly. The poor thing didn’t understand that when the peasants didn’t have bread, they didn’t have anything. She was really very sweet. Clueless in Versailles, but very sweet and a very loving mother.”

“There are worse epitaphs.”

Amanda smiled. “And I’ve heard some of them.” She poured herself another cup of coffee. “Jehanne, are you all right?”

The echo of Cassandra’s question brushed her skin like footsteps over a grave. “_Oui, ça va, ma soeur_. Just tired.” No voices, no, but a freakish twitch of unease that buzzed back and forth like a fly.

“Another guest came in last night?” Amanda refilled Jehanne’s cup.

“Yes. Did we wake you?”

“I heard the van start.”

“I have got to get that engine tuned up. I meant to get out my tools earlier this week…”

Amanda sighed. “Except I dragged a sick friend in here for you to take care of. You’re too easy, you know — too kind to those of us who take advantage.”

“Here, now. This is one of my closest friends you’re maligning!”

Shoes echoed on the staircase.

“Ah, and this is my new guest,” Jehanne said. She pitched her voice a little higher, more carrying. “Cassandra, we’re in the kitchen.”

“I thought you might be.” Cassandra took two cat-like steps past the threshold, her eyes flicking from Jehanne to Amanda and back again. Dressed in a burgundy sweater and black trousers, her auburn hair braided from crown to nape and then flaring out into riotous waves, she looked composed and confident, not like the woman who’d cried herself to sleep in Jehanne’s arms. After a smile directed to Jehanne, Cassandra looked back at Amanda. This time their gazes locked, studying each other.

Jehanne leaned back in her chair, sipping her _café au lait_, judging the temperature of the encounter. With men, she might have found herself standing between such a pair, holding them apart at the length of her arms. _Elek and François, for example._ Cassandra rarely came into an encounter prepared for a fight. Amanda got her way by cunning, most of the time: she played a slightly ditzy, slightly brittle, ‘girl-about-town’ with no worries and no agenda.

But that in itself didn’t preclude problems.

Oddly, for such independent women, neither Cassandra nor Amanda particularly cared for their own sex. Before her transition, Jehanne had always been happier with women; even now, she found women less of a strain, less effort to deal with than men.

Cassandra held out her hand. “Cassandra.”

“Amanda.” She accepted the handshake. They studied each other another moment, two strange cats sniffing out the ground between them. Then the hands dropped back to their sides. Cassandra pulled a chair out from the table and eased into it with the easy grace of an old Immortal.

Amanda noted it. She didn’t show her realization, but Jehanne knew Amanda. Amanda noted the grace and estimated the age without so much as a blink of an ebony eye.

Jehanne passed coffee and cream across the table first, then pushed the plate of bread and cheese after it.

A heavy metal-on-metal clang made Amanda jump. “Good lord, what is —” A second brassy dong followed it, and she sighed. “Clock. How old is that thing?”

“It was here when I got the place,” Jehanne said. “I have no idea whether it’s nineteenth or eighteenth century.”

“It’s damned loud, however old it is,” Cassandra said.

The last metal clamor faded away. Amanda’s eyes widened. “It’s only eight o’clock?” She shuddered. “I knew I hated the country. All that peace and quiet is hell on a good solid sleep.” She cast a jaundiced eye at Jehanne. “And how long have you been up?”

Jehanne shrugged. “Who knows?”

“Five-forty-five,” Cassandra said.

“You were asleep!”

“Cold air under the blankets wakes me no matter the time. I looked at the bedside clock as you went out the door.” A little smirk punctuated the sentence, and Cassandra sipped her coffee with regal insouciance.

Amanda laughed, and Jehanne shoved her. Amanda shoved back, Jehanne retaliated, and after a number of rounds of useless pushing and pulling, the three women all dissolved into giddy, silly laughter.

The doorbell interrupted the laughter, its deep peremptory voice ringing from the stone, echoing in the kitchen.

“The door?” Cassandra’s head swung around. “Are you expecting anyone?” A note of near-panic entered her voice.

Amanda’s eyes narrowed again. “This is Holy Ground, Cassandra — we’re safe from all but mortals.”

“Safe from losing our heads,” was the answer. “Not safe from everything — Jehanne?”

Jehanne, on her feet, ran a hand over Cassandra’s hair. “_Eh, bien, ma soeur_,” Jehanne said. “_Ne te dérange pas_[_**[5]**_](http://archiveofourown.org/javascripts/tiny_mce/plugins/paste/pasteword.htm?1274712429#_ftn5)_. _Remember that I am a doctor, and this rather ancient building is also my second clinic. Let’s see what’s what before we borrow trouble.” She went out into the foyer, took hold of the wrought iron handle and pulled the door open. “Ah, _bonjour_, Madame LeChinois! And my godchild, _non_?”

“_Oui_. Marie-Jeannette, say _bonjour_ to _Madame la Docteur_.” The baby, however, shook her head and hid her face in her mother’s shoulder. “Now, now, show your manners, _chouchou_ — This is the miracle doctor who brought you into my life, and such a miracle it was, _ça_!”

Jehanne smiled, and shook her head. “Ah, Madame, you give me too much credit. Me, I am only the hands of the blessed saints.” She ran a rapid eye over the child:  flushed, thumb in mouth, mouth and eyes drooping. Another quick glance showed her that Madame had yet another black eye:  the fifth in three months. “Now, tell me what is wrong with my namesake?”

“In the middle of the night, she wakes, Madame. She throws the covers off and screams that she is hot, then clutches them to her and complains of the cold. _Mon mari_[_**[6]**_](http://archiveofourown.org/javascripts/tiny_mce/plugins/paste/pasteword.htm?1274712429#_ftn6), he is angry, he needs his sleep for the day...”

Jehanne put two fingers lightly against the corner of Ninon LeChinois’ bruised eye. “And gave you this, did he?”

Ninon stared at the floor.

“Yes. Well. Let’s go into the clinic, and we’ll take a look at what troubles _mademoiselle_ here.” She held out both hands. “Will you let me take you, _ma petite_?”

Marie-Jeannette eyed her distrustfully.

Ninon patted the child’s back. “Here, _chouchou_, go with _Madame le Docteur_. She will make you feel better.”

“And after you have permitted the exam, we will give you some _chocolat_, what do you say?” Jehanne said.

The bribe returned a watery smile, and the child held out her arms.

“I’ll fix the drink,” Cassandra said. “Madame, come with us. The kitchen’s much warmer than this cold hall.” Cassandra and Amanda were alike in one thing, at least: their hearts could be counted on to warm up unexpectedly, especially where an abusive man and a bruised woman appeared.

Jehanne swept Marie-Jeannette into the clinic-room, where a Franklin stove kept banked warmed the atmosphere to bearable. She chattered to the child, confirmed her suspicion of a tooth coming in along with the inevitable ear infection, and eased the pain with some cotton wool and warm oil. That, a bottle of antibiotic suspension, and a mild analgesic should serve. She propped the child on her hip, collected the medication, and wandered into the kitchen to find, as expected, that Ninon had been plied with _café au lait_, fresh bread and cheese, and advice.

“I’m afraid Marie-Jeannette has an ear infection,” Jehanne said. “I’ve got medication for her to take, and something to help her sleep.”

“And as for **you**, Madame,” Cassandra said severely, and left the sentence hanging.

“Ah, me,” Ninon said, with a shrug. “A woman who has a man, she puts up with what she must put up with, _madame_, what else is there to do?”

Cassandra looked as if she’d argue the point, but Jehanne interrupted. “If the time comes you no longer must put up with it, _madame_, then you know you are welcome here.”

The mortal’s dark eyes flashed with laughter. “So that you can throw _mon mari_ into the pigsty as you did _M’sieur_ Madrigal?”

“Into the pigsty?” Amanda said, all alert and interested.

Jehanne groaned. “Oh, no, Amanda, don’t listen — it’s all exaggerated.”

Cassandra’s eyes sparkled. “The pigsty? Oh, we have to hear this one!”

Amanda assumed an attentive expression and eyed Ninon with flattering interest. Jehanne leaned back against the kitchen wall and buried her face in her hands.

“_M’sieur_ Madrigal, he is a pig, anyway —_mon mari_, he has the temper, yes, but not like _M’sieur_. _M’sieur_, he is a bully, and he is bullying his mother this day, you see, and she is an old woman, a small woman, and he is quite a big man for a pig. So our _Madame la Docteur_, she comes upon him shouting at his mother, and poof! _Madame_ Jehanne, she flies at him. Does he listen? No, no, of course not, he is stubborn and foolish enough to threaten our doctor. Promptly, _Madame_ Jehanne, she does this with her hands and that with her feet and _M’sieur_, he is upside down in the pigsty before he knows where he is!”

Amanda, grinning, said, “So this is how you keep the peace?”

Marie-Jeannette, not sure why her mother and the strangers laughed, added her own babbling to the mix.

Jehanne spoke from between her fingers, with all that was visible of her face scarlet. “Well, he **_is_** a pig, _à bon droit_[_**[7]**_](http://archiveofourown.org/javascripts/tiny_mce/plugins/paste/pasteword.htm?1274712429#_ftn7), and it did him no harm to become closer acquainted with his relatives.” She dropped her shield, straightened, and said, “And now, Madame, come with me and let me give you some early daffodils from the greenhouse for your dinner table.”

Jehanne returned, without the LeChinois family, much less flushed by embarrassment than by sun. Cassandra grinned at her.

“Ah, that’s the Jhenette I know!” Cassandra said, her voice light and free of strain now. “The one who used to beat prostitutes when she caught them following her army!”

Jehanne winced. Amanda froze; Jehanne’s reaction was more intense than she expected.

Coffee slopped onto the table; Cassandra scrambled to her feet and wrapped an arm around Jehanne’s shoulders. “I’m sorry. I meant it kindly… Jehanne who always rights the wrongs done to others —”

“No,” and she managed a smile before she went to grab a cloth and wipe up the spill. “You do good to remind me how quick I am to judge.” She had beaten men, too, in her army, when necessary. Before she had stopped being a soldier.

Amanda jumped into the conversation. “Well, what’s a little quick judgment when it keeps pigs where they belong? Doctor, counselor, defender of the helpless?” Amanda said. “You **are** a saint, _n’est-ce pas_?”

The wince of shame disappeared. Jehanne rolled her eyes. “_Épais_[_**[8]**_](http://archiveofourown.org/javascripts/tiny_mce/plugins/paste/pasteword.htm?1274712429#_ftn8). Tell it to the marines, don’t your American friends say?” She sighed and slid her arm around Cassandra’s waist. “Well, I have learned more about the circumstances of women who sell themselves and I am less likely to judge them these days. Here, you have reminded me of duties, though, Amanda.” She motioned to the soup pot and the coffee. “Keep an eye on this while I check out my other current patient.”

Cassandra, halfway between the table and the stove, stopped. “Do you want assistance? I don’t mind helping.”

Jehanne frowned. “Are you sure you’re up to it? You look to me as if you’d be better to relax and eat a little more bread and cheese. And drink less coffee. You’re thinner than usual.”

“As I said,” Amanda said, twisting around on the chair, “doctor _and_ counselor. I dropped the unexpected guest on you — I should be the one to help.”

Cassandra waved a dismissive hand. “I’ve been both doctor and nurse, Amanda. That kind of work is more relaxing to me than hours of sleep and platters of bread and cheese.”

“Then by all means. I’ll make more coffee.” Amanda glanced at the coffee-pot. “Once I’ve finished this, that is.”

Together, Jehanne and Cassandra ascended the stairs. _Well, not together_, Jehanne amended — she stopped at the top and turned to wait.

Pausing on the top step, the older Immortal shook her head. “All that energy. There wouldn’t be a need for oil and coal if they could harness the energy you give off. It’s like standing next to power lines.”

Jehanne bowed. “I will regard that as a compliment. End of the hall.”

“A little far down for a patient, isn’t it?”

“Remember The Roof? I’m waiting for the workmen to decide the time is propitious for work. The middle bedrooms need repair first. And furniture. And the end of the hall gets sunshine on two walls and is farthest from downstairs noise. Best for patients.” Jehanne pushed the heavy door inward and stepped inside.

Cassandra screamed, the shriek of a damned soul. “Methos!”

The limp figure galvanized. He rolled out of the covers, fell to the floor, then moved, a streak of stillness-become-action, throwing himself into the corner and coming up to face them. A cobra might have suddenly risen in their path, spread its hood, and hissed — but there was no sound from this man.

For a second, Cassandra froze, and Jehanne saw terror in her eyes, but only for a second. The terror flared into rage.

Running feet skidded on the floor behind them. Amanda barreled into Cassandra, hurling her into Jehanne. The three of them landed on the floor in a tangled skein of arms and legs.

“What’s going on?” Amanda disentangled herself. “Jehanne? Adam, are you —”

‘Adam’ glanced at the door, measuring the distance, measuring the space between himself and them.

Cassandra cut her off. “Adam? His name is Methos! How could you have taken him in here?! What lies did he tell you to get him to help you?”

“What?” Amanda’s soprano peaked in the F over high C range, sharp enough to break windows. “What in the hell are you —”

Cassandra shifted, gathering herself for a spring, and the man jerked himself back further into the wall, his eyes hunting for an escape route.

“_Arrêtez_!” Jehanne shouted. “_Ça suffit, mon Dieu_!” She flung herself across Cassandra, wrapping both arms around her friend, pinning her arms to her sides. “_Sommes-nous des femmes, ou sommes-nous des sauvages_?”

*** *** ***

The words, ‘are we savages?’ stopped Cassandra in her tracks.

They meant something to the two other women, although Amanda couldn’t guess what. It was enough to take all the fight out of Cassandra. As soon as she relaxed, so did Methos. He still looked as if he might choose the nearest window if one of them moved, but he relaxed out of fight stance.

_Ten to one this is the ex-girlfriend he needed to get away from._

Jehanne’s grip relaxed. She got back on her feet, then pulled Cassandra upright. Of the three women in the room, Amanda thought to herself, with some wry amusement, Jehanne was the youngest, the shortest — and the calmest. “Cassandra, come out here, with me. Come on.”

“If you let him talk,” Cassandra said, “he’ll slither out of all the trouble like an eel.”

“I’m not the one with the voice,” the old man shot back, anger exploding for the first time since his leap from the bed. His voice sounded ragged. A raspy cough shook him.

_The ‘voice’? What do you mean, Methos?_

“Cassandra,” Jehanne said, and her voice had nothing but serenity and logic and gentle certainty in it. “Come outside. Talk to me.”

The auburn hair swung like a whip as the taller woman turned, but Jehanne broached the difference in height to put her fingertips against Cassandra’s lips, then shook her head. Over her shoulder, she said, “Amanda — will you stay with my guest?”

Cassandra startled at the question.

_Interesting to know if  the words “my guest” did that…_ “Yes, of course I will.” Amanda moved forward to close the door. The heavy door settled into the jamb, with the hollow thud of foot-thick-planks from an older time. Amanda went across to Methos, and after a moment, he allowed her to support him, to ease him back onto the edge of the bed, but insisted on sitting. His knees barely held his weight. Maybe shock — maybe a setback. The pajamas hung rather loosely on his lanky frame, but left a couple of inches of ankle bare, giving him an absurd and wholly deceptive look of vulnerability

Then she listened to him breathe. Breath rasped in his throat, and his chest heaved with the effort. _God, he’s sicker than I imagined. And right where he was trying not to be…_

“You didn’t say anything about Cassandra being here,” he said. “I didn’t know you knew her.”

“I don’t. I didn’t. We met this morning. She’s Jehanne’s friend, not mine — she came last night, in the middle of the night. I heard the car leave and then come back,” Amanda said, all in one breath, and then realized that she was, as always, at a loss against the old man’s tongue. “And you were in no condition to hand out details about your social life, as I recall.”

“Quickening,” he said, managing one word per gasped breath. “Exposure. Pneumonia: I seem to recall the symptoms. Age. All of those catch up with you.”

“Is she the one you were worried about? Is Duncan in danger from her?”

“Duncan?” He shook his head, then blinked as if dizzy. “No, she’s no threat to Duncan.  She feels he’s an answer to prophecy. Too important to the Game. But she and I have — previously met.”

“It doesn’t sound like a casual acquaintance,” she said, letting the claws bite in a little. She recoiled from the look in his eyes.

“It wasn’t.” The two words dropped like the trapdoor of a gallows releasing.

_And Cassandra the hangman?_

The words must have been said aloud, though she’d thought them silent, because he looked at her and the keen wry sardonic edge swept back into his voice. “She’d like to be.”

*** *** ***

Words poured out of her mouth like the pyroclastic flows of Vesuvius. And her assertions were as useless as hiding in the docks on the edge of Pompeii and praying for rescue would have been. Duncan hadn’t believed her until he heard the bastard condemn himself.

_Why should Jehanne —_

“Stop!” Jehanne said again.

Cassandra stammered to a halt.

“I know you!” Jehanne stopped, as if she were a bowstring pulled taut, waiting for release. “I know **you**, not him. Cassandra, if you tell me something is, then of course I believe you.”

_‘Of course’._ Cassandra’s knees buckled. She caught at the wall to support herself. _‘Of course.’_ If one constant existed, it was not in mathematics. It was in Jhenette. Jehanne of the impossible, unwavering faith.

Either she had said it aloud, or her thoughts were less guarded today. Jehanne’s eyes were blinding sunlight, and her calloused hands felt like a net stretched between earth and the abyss.

Jehanne pulled Cassandra’s head down to her shoulder. “My friend, the pope regardless, I am no saint. I have doubted — in some matters I think I may have paid for my doubts, and in others I do not think it possible to repay. But I do not doubt you. I will never doubt you.”

Cassandra dragged a hand across her sodden eyelashes. The salt burned. “Duncan said he had changed. He went back to the Horsemen, but Duncan said he had changed — Duncan stopped me from taking his head.” She slammed her fist against the wall. The pain was welcome; it took away some of the sting of the salt in her eyes. “He said he wanted him to live.” Amanda had defended him — “You’ve known Amanda long?”

“Yes, I know her well.”

“She brought him here?”

“Yesterday morning, just before dawn. It was raining, then, too…”

*** *** ***

“I need you to tell me what happened, Methos,” Amanda said. A hint of desperation sounded in her voice, and she winced at the exposure. But Methos could do that to his friends as well as his foes… “If I’d had some idea that we might run into this…”

_Methos stirs again. His eyelids flicker. His breathing sounds like a rusty file; when he coughs, it sounds wet and thick as cotton wool._

_She needs both hands to keep the Audi in the ruts and on the lane. “It’s all right. We’ll be there in just a minute.”_

_He subsides._

_A glance down at the clock on the dashboard tells her that dawn should be coming over the hills in a matter of minutes. The car slews into the courtyard, skids as the brakes catch, then stops._

_“Stay here. I’ll be back.” She shoves open her door. Rain slaps across her face; she shivers, squints through it, and slogs through the mud to the small door buried in the stone wall of the house. The old iron bell pull hangs in the same place, but a new rope dangles from the loop. Amanda yanks on the rope. _

_The dull bass gong of the bell bounces from one stone to the next._

_A light flicks on over her head. _

_**Come on, come on,** Amanda says to herself, looking back over her shoulder at the car. She can only hope that Methos won’t  develop any urges to wander off into the dark —she’s known him to suddenly disappear, on more than one occasion, without any warning._

_The door groans on its hinges. Inside light blinds her a moment, showing only the outline and shadow of the short solid figure in the doorway. Then the blindness clears. It shows her Jehanne , in dowdy white flannel pajamas, blue wool robe, and bare feet, her dark hair rumpled and the pupils of her pale eyes dilated with sleep._

_“Amanda! **Quelle surprise incroyable**!  Are we in trouble?”_

_“I don’t know about you, but I’m in no trouble,” Amanda retorts, relief making her voice waver a little. “Yet.”_

_“What’s the matter?”_

_Amanda glances back again, marks Methos’ body leaning on the window, and turns back. “I’ve got a friend in the car. Jehanne, he’s not well. I need someplace safe for him to rest.”_

_A quick nod answers.  Jehanne runs a hand through her tangled hair. “Can he walk?”_

_“I’m not sure.”_

_“I’ll get on my boots.” She turns to the cupboard against the wall, digs out high rubber boots and a World War I era khaki greatcoat that flops over the ends of her small hands and comes within four inches of the floor. “Have you been on the road long?”_

_“Five, almost six hours. From Paris.”_

_Jehanne’s eyes flick up, measuring the quality of the grey at the horizon. She purses her lips, nods, and folds up the long sleeves of her coat. She follows Amanda to the car._

_When Amanda opens the car door, Methos almost topples out onto the ground. _

_Jehanne catches him, braces herself against his near-dead-weight, and clicks her tongue in irritation and reproof. “Well, he’s not, no. Heavy, he is, yes. Can you get him awake enough to give us help? Otherwise, I’d better get the wheelbarrow.”_

_Amanda stifles her laugh by turning it into a cough._

_“I’m dying,” the old man says crossly, “and you’re laughing at me.”_

_“Eh, **bien**,” Jehanne says. “He’s awake.”_

_He starts to swing his legs around and topples again. Amanda reaches over the door and grabs his shoulder. She has to think for a second, to remember what name he’s using. “Adam. Let us help you.”_

_His eyes slant up at them, watchful, uneasy, his self-protective instinct rising up again._

_“This is **La Terre Sanctifiée**, m’sieur,” Jehanne says. “You’re safe for the moment.”_

_His only response is a harsh laugh that expands into a cough; the cough jerks into a wheezing, rasping hacking that shakes his entire long body. It takes both of them to hold him in the seat, both of them to get him upright. He coughs and chokes all of the way into the house. _

_Jehanne sets her teeth as she guides them to the east stairs. At least the kitchen is lit, and offers a way to see into the hall beyond it._

_“Shouldn’t we stop a moment?” Amanda leans forward to peer around their not-very-helpful charge._

_Jehanne shakes her head._

_“We’re all coated with mud.”_

_“It will wash.” Jehanne takes a deep breath, then the first few stairs._

_The upper hall feels a little warmer than the foyer. Electric light sends its cold flare down the corridor. It’s been years since she’s  done anything similar to dragging a man down a stone corridor, but before this Amanda has considered herself in good shape. Jehanne just plows ahead, as if handling a sack of potatoes that insists on trying to move itself. They turn to the left, down the interminable hallway past door after door. Then Jehanne gasps, “Here.”_

_The hinges have at least been lubricated; it opens silently._

_“Across the room, the chair next to the bed,” is the next sentence. Between them, they get him into the chair and settled, without Methos slipping onto the floor._

_Jehanne rests first her palm, then the back of her hand against his forehead and against the sides of the flesh stretched over his skull. “Fever’s high. Too high.” _

_“It was high in Paris. I thought it might have gone down a little.”_

_“I don’t think so.” Jehanne starts stripping off her coat. “You get his boots off. I’ll build a fire before I get the electric heater.”_

_“I thought you were going to put in central heating.”_

_“The roof needed repair,” she says. “East and South wings. Central heating had to wait.” Jehanne kneels by the hearth, takes matches from a drawer in the iron cage holding the fireplace tools, and sets the kindling alight. It takes a few minutes before the logs catch and heat filters into the room. “Bathroom’s in the corner.”_

_The small room once was a dressing room, as far as Amanda remembers. She washes the mud off her hands, sets Methos’ muddy boots and her own equally-sloppy Wellingtons in the corner, drapes his wet socks over the basin, and then heads back out to check on circumstances._

_Methos still sprawls in the wood-and-brocade chair, arms on the padded arms, head bowed on his chest, a dying king enfleshed. Jehanne is nowhere to be seen, but the door stands ajar._

_Amanda considers it a moment, then starts on Methos’ shirt. Duncan’s shirt. Whatever ... it’s almost as soaked as the one she’d stripped from him in Paris, though with sweat, not rain. Jehanne is right — his skin is even hotter now.  First one arm, then the other; then she leans him forward onto her shoulder to drag the shirt up over his back and over his head. The cloth sticks to his skin. As she pulls it free, the chill air hits his damp skin; gooseflesh prickles in its wake._

_A brief blast of colder air makes them both shudder._

_“I’ve got something dry to put on him.” Jehanne pulls the bed curtains apart, then draws back counterpane, duvet, and sheet, and shoves a hot-water bottle under them. She sets her medical bag by the bed. The armful of cloth she shakes out._

_“A nightshirt? Taking the Restoration a little seriously, are we?”_

_Jehanne tries to bite back a giggle but fails. She picks up one of Methos’ eel-like arms and threads it into the matching sleeve. “One size fits almost all. When he’s had some time to rest, we’ll get something more modern on him. You get the other arm. Then we’ll stand him up to manage the rest of him.”_

_“There’s a lot to the rest of him.”_

_“**Eh, oui, je l’ai noté, moi**, “ Jehanne says. “Be serious; if you start me on the sillies, I’m like as not to drop him and then we shall have a time of it.”_

_Amanda estimates the distance from the floor to the top of the mattress and winces. “On three?”_

_Jehanne nods, sets her shoulder under Methos’ arm, and starts the count. “**Une, deux, trois**...”_

_They have a bad moment when one of his jean legs snags on an edge of the elaborate chair carving, and a still worse one when his foot turns as they shift him around and Methos starts to come out of his daze. With a grunt and a heave, the three of them fall onto the bed. Jehanne manages to keep Methos on the mattress, but Amanda slides off onto the stone floor._

_“Ow!” Amanda rubs her hip, stands up, takes hold of Methos’ legs, and swings them around onto the bed. Jehanne slides off the far side of the bed and wipes her forehead with the back of her hand._

_“**Chérie**, must all of your friends be so tall?”_

_“If you weren’t so short ...”_

_Jehanne draws herself up to the last fraction of her five-foot-three-and-seven-eighths inches. “I’ll have you know that I was considered tall in my day.”_

_“Amazing how women shrank in five hundred years,” Amanda says dryly, blithely ignoring the fact that for her time, she had been not only unusually tall for a woman, but taller than most of the men she’d known._

_Jehanne ruins her dignity with a giggle. Then she sobers. “Let’s take a look at this friend of yours.” She lifts the bag onto the mattress, opens it, and begins the medical ceremonies Amanda associates with mortals._

_He starts to cough during the exam, a thick nasty wet cough._

_“Towel!” Jehanne snaps._

_Amanda darts into the bathroom, grabs the nearest towel to hand, and rushes back. Jehanne seizes the towel and stuffs it next to Methos’ mouth. “Help me roll him on his side.”_

_He coughs up a glob of foul yellowish sputum, then segues into dry heaves, then lies in a stupor while Jehanne listens to his lungs, checks his pulse, and takes his temperature. She straightens before pulling the covers up over his body._

_“Well?” Amanda taps a fingernail against the tester._

_“Let me wash my hands.” Jehanne disappears into the bathroom. Amanda hears water running. The water stops, and Jehanne emerges, drying her hands on a second towel._

_“From the symptoms, I’d say pneumonia. I could do a culture, but in the end, I’m going to give him the same treatment no matter what bug it is.” She ferrets through the bag, acquires a vial of clear liquid, and holds it up for a moment, squinting at the label. “That will do it.” When she draws out a syringe and a capped needle, Amanda shudders and looked away._

_“I hate needles.”_

_“I can’t say they’re one of my favorite things, but I’m not trying to get something down him by mouth.” She finishes the injection. “Let’s get a couple more pillows behind him. I’d like him as upright as possible.”_

_Again, it requires both of them to handle Methos. When they finish, Jehanne sighs and sits down on the chair by the bed. Her eyes narrow at Amanda. “You’ve been driving in this all night. Go and get in my bed; the sheets should still be warm. And don’t say what you’re thinking.”_

_“Me?” Amanda says on automatic, her body already relaxing and her mind going drowsy at the thought of warm sheets and comforters. An unpleasant sense of duty forces her to hesitate. “Don’t you want some help? I hate to just dump him on you...”_

_“You haven’t. Here, I’ll walk with you on my way to the kitchen.” Jehanne shepherds her out of the room and shuts the heavy door behind them. “Now, then,” she says, as grave as the abbess she’d been when they first met in the sixteen-hundreds. “How much trouble do you expect? What do you know about him?”_

_“His name is Adam. He’s ...” Amanda swallows air, then finishes it simply, “a friend. He showed up on my doorstep in Paris, soaking wet, said he’d come from Bordeaux and there might be another one of us after him.” She takes herself two doors down to Jehanne’s room and leans on the half-open door._

_“Merde,” Jehanne mutters. “You said he’s more than ill?”_

_Amanda flinches in spite of herself. “No, I didn’t.”_

_The smaller woman runs both hands through her cropped hair. “Very well, then, you didn’t. I don’t read minds, mon amie , and I haven’t taken up the cards. I grant you, pneumonia’s not a thing to treat lightly, even in one of us, but that’s not the extent of the problem, is it? Why are you so worried?”_

_“Your voices haven’t told you everything?” Amanda tries to force lightness into her tone and hears herself sound merely shaky._

_With the back of one hand, Jehanne taps Amanda’s shoulder. “My voices come out when they feel it necessary. So far, you and your friend Adam Pierson are as grey to me as the morning sky out there.” In a slightly more gentle tone, she added, “This is a good thing, since it likely means nothing requires caution of me.”_

_“He’s —” Amanda rubs her eyes. “I’ve known him longer than I’ve known you.”_

_“He’s one of the old ones.”_

_“Yes.” **If I only dared tell you how old...**_

“Ask Cassandra,” the old man said, as if words weighed too much to lift. “She’ll be only too happy to give you all the —” he bared his teeth a second, then added, “gory details.”

Between her teeth, with her fingers itching for his throat, itching to shake him, Amanda said, “I want _you_ to tell me. Jehanne is my friend. I brought you here. Damn it, you owe me this much!”

“Ah,” he said, staring off into nothing, “and I’ve worked so hard these past centuries not to owe anyone anything—”

*** *** ***

“Thousands of people,” Cassandra said, seeing nothing but the unreeling of one horrible image after another. Every now and then the reel stopped dead, snarled in her brain, to show her a pile of skulls, followed by the dim interior of a tent — and her memory shut down, went black, and then threw up another series of horror followed by grim grey sandy days. Her mind balked, and a very small voice offered a glimmer of gold: _there were good moments…_ And flickers of kisses and laughter sparked in the shadows.

No. No good moments. No light in that darkness. The small voice, a little louder now, offered her Methos’ words. _‘You forgot what I was.’_

“What do you want me to do?” Jehanne’s voice ground out, like a crow’s caw ripping through the air between them.

Cassandra jerked herself out of the centuries of memory, looking at the girlish face of her friend. Jehanne, trapped forever in a nineteen-year-old body, rarely showed even those few centuries of Immortality she’d gained. “I want him —” she heard her voice crack, and stopped. _I will never forget again._

“Cassandra. This is Holy Ground.” It was not harshness in her husky alto, but wariness. No, not even that. Worry. Maybe — fear?

“I know that.” If he hadn’t been stunned by a Quickening, unaware of her, could she have taken his head? _Can I do it now?_

Jehanne’s alto dropped even lower, as if she forced out the words. “Do you want me to tell him to leave?”

The bottom dropped out of the floor. Cassandra blinked, and blinked again, until she could see Jehanne’s face, could feel the rough wall beneath her fingers. Holy Ground: they stood on Holy Ground. No, they stood on _Jehanne’s_ ground: _Jehanne’s_ home.

And Methos, under whatever ægis, had been accepted into this home as a guest. “He’s your guest. Your patient.”

“Yes.” Jehanne frowned at her. “And so are you.”

Behind her, the bedroom door groaned on its heavy hinges.

Cassandra stiffened. After a moment, she realized her palms hurt, and that her fingernails dug into her flesh. She forced her hands to relax and schooled her face as Methos stepped into the doorway.

The pajamas didn’t fit him, although they were men’s pajamas and not Jehanne’s. _Well, they wouldn’t, would they?_ They emphasized his height and his lean build, played up hollows in his face that might not have been there if he hadn’t been sick recently. _I don’t care if he’s been sick._

“Doctor Martin,” he said, stiffly, hoarsely, addressing himself solely to Jehanne, “I’ve intruded on your hospitality and I apologize.”

“I’ll go,” Cassandra said, surprised to hear the words leave her tongue, hearing herself as if someone else spoke.

“I have a guest house,” Jehanne said. Now she sounded sharp and indignant. “There’s no need for either of you —” Her eyes lifted, looking over his shoulder at Amanda, and she corrected herself. “For **_any_** of you to leave.”

“I can —” Cassandra began.

Methos’s voice started a half-beat later. “I’ll move.” Then, a second before she started, he added, “If you’d rather —”

“If you want —” and she stopped herself, listening to their voices fading into the ancient stone. It would be almost laughable, if any of them felt like laughing.

Amanda stepped between them. “For god’s sake, both of you! This is Holy Ground!”

Methos nodded, stiffly, and waited.

Jehanne said, “_M’sieur_ Pierson, if you would be so kind as to accept the guest house as your accommodations while you’re my guest, I would be very grateful.”

This time he bowed. It showed a grace and dignity Cassandra resented. He couldn’t even act as if the situation were awkward. He sounded less hoarse when he said, “I’ll move there now.”

“Sheets?” Amanda said. “Clothes?”

“Linens are in the cupboard in the hallway outside of the guesthouse bedrooms,” Jehanne said. “All four bedrooms are ready, and you’ll just need to turn up the heat a little. Pajamas will be in with the linens. _M’sieur_ Pierson, your clothes should be dry, but they’re in the laundry. I’ll bring them out to you later. I’ve got your boots in the village — the cobbler’s seeing if they’re salvageable. I’ll get you a pair of slippers for the meantime.”

“You’re having someone look at my boots?” Real surprise, the first impromptu emotion, enlivened his face.

“They were practically sponge,” she said. “You’re still not well, _m’sieur_. Amanda, you’ll help him?”

“Yes, of course.”

The heavy door shut behind the two of them, leaving Cassandra and Jehanne out in the corridor.

“You,” Jehanne said firmly, “are going back to bed. I’m going to give you another cup of chocolate and something to help you relax.”

Cassandra tried to protest, but rage drained all her strength. She found herself in the bedroom, let herself be undressed and tucked back under the sheets.

“Stay here!” Jehanne said.

Jehanne, of course, did not have the Voice, but she had led an army. Cassandra settled back into the mattress.

With the bedroom door shut, she could hear nothing from the corridor. Bright sunlight flooded the room through the open shutters, but darkness seemed to spill over her. She lay on her back, unwilling to sit up — as if that might cause what ever terrors lay in her mind to become reality — staring up at the ceiling and the faces hiding in its shadows.

It might have been minutes: it might have been hours. The sun still stood high enough to be above her view from the window. A loud rap at the door startled her out of memories.

“It’s me,” said that familiar serene alto. “Sit up a moment, _chérie_. You can’t drink from a cup lying down.”

“I’m cold,” Cassandra said, as she scooted herself up against the pillows and wrapped her arms around her knees.

“Shock,” was the reply. Jehanne set this tray down on the bedside table. “That chocolate shouldn’t be too hot.” Along with the mug, the tray carried a flannel-covered hot-water bottle. Jehanne stuffed it under the covers. “I’m going to give you a mild sedative. Intramuscular. Your arm or your thigh?”

“Thigh, I think.” The consideration pushed the demons further away. She drew up her nightgown.

Jehanne uncapped a syringe, then took a vial clearly labeled Valium. The dose was freshly drawn, expertly injected, and the syringe recapped. The site was covered with a bandage, and then, no longer the doctor, but now the friend, Jehanne sat on the foot of the bed while Cassandra drank the thick sweet mixture.

“Now you will lie back down and sleep a while.”

The injection spread through her muscles, weighting down her arms and legs, drawing her head into the pillows. “Don’t want to dream.”

“You won’t,” the alto said, soothing and musical, a rhythm spreading through her brain like the sedative through her body. “Relax, Cassandra. This is not your past. This is now, the present. There is no one here who will harm you. You are safe here, on Holy Ground. You have nothing to fear. Sleep. Sleep a while and heal.” A solid, familiar body lay down on the bedcovers, next to her, and Jehanne stroked Cassandra’s hair and hummed some childhood tune, something French and medieval and soothing.

*** *** ***

The pajamas and bathrobe had been made for a bigger man. Or at least one heavier than he was at present. Bigger but shorter. The heating in the guesthouse was more than adequate, once turned up, and separate controls in each room let each guest adjust it to personal preference.

Methos refused to lie down in any bed, in spite of Amanda’s scolding. He made it back and forth across the narrow drawing room twice before easing down onto a sofa and leaning his head back against its padded back. At this point, being stabbed again would have been a relief, if only for the brief oblivion. Coughs built up in his chest then broke loose. His muscles barely responded when he tried to move. How long had he been sick? He needed more strength than this.

The beds — any of them — tempted him. To lie down, to sleep, to disappear into darkness sounded overwhelmingly seductive. Dangerously seductive. He needed to move. He needed to be able to move. At least he was on Holy Ground. Cassandra would respect the rules of Immortal sanctuary.

Amanda had found something to read, and chose the chaise longue across from him. Once in a while her dark eyes flicked up and over to him. If her eyes met his, they paused. He couldn’t read anything there, and apparently she could read nothing in his.

Of all the incredible freaks and mischances, to have Cassandra, nightmarishly, thrust into his vicinity a second time… With any luck, he’d have the Highlander and Joe Dawson show up on the doorstep and at that point, he’d go completely out of his mind. He couldn’t walk much — he wasn’t healing as quickly as he should have. It might have something to do with the effect of a double Quickening, a shared double Quickening… It might have something to do with mental stamina. After being on guard for so many days, the sudden respite from thinking ahead of Kronos, thinking ahead of Duncan and Cassandra and Joe — a most formidable team of opponents…

Such care he'd taken, such thought put into each step, trying to manipulate his companions and his pursuers at the same time and still stay alive. The chime of the mantel clock interrupted his thoughts, at the half-hour, the hour, and then another half-hour; still he went over his strategy again and again, trying to lock down the flaws that brought him here.

A peremptory knock interrupted his mental carousel. The outside door. He flinched, was furious with himself, and settled back, watching the pocket door that led into the foyer. Nothing followed the knock for a moment.

One of the doors slid back, nothing but the scrape of wood on metal. After a moment, the woman Amanda and Cassandra called Jeanne stepped into the drawing room, holding a covered pot, with a string bag over her shoulder and a baguette tucked under her arm. She set pot and bread down on the end table nearest the door, and then pulled the door to before turning back to smile at them. She’d changed out of whatever footgear she’d crossed the flagging in to one of the several pairs of dry slippers he’d noticed sitting near the front door.

Amanda put her book down. “It’s chilly out there, you know? I’m dying for some coffee. Jeanne, you do keep Viennese roast, don’t you, darling? And I’ll take that — for our lunch, I suppose?”

His attention had been on Cassandra, not on the woman who’d pulled her out into the hallway and away from him. He took the moment to study the stranger, analyzing what he saw and matching it to his vague memories from the abbey. To begin with, of course, she’d kept Cassandra from going for him, and that weighed in the positive for her.

“Of course I keep Viennese roast.” A pleasant alto, a little deeper than most women’s voices, and a pleasant smile to go with it. “The soup needs another half-an-hour on the stove and the vegetables will be tender. There’s butter in the bag with the baguette. That will finish off your lunch, and we’ll figure out dinner later.” She glanced at him and said, “Your boots will be ready tomorrow. I think the slippers in this bag should fit you. And they’re hard-soled, if you should want to go into the garden.”

Jeanne had changed her clothes. She wore well-fitted wool trousers and a ribbed turtleneck under a winter jacket, which neither disguised nor flaunted her body. Contained, neat, unassuming. Conventional, French, middle-class. Not someone he’d look twice at on the street, not the way that Alexa had stopped him cold, and neither striking, like Cassandra, nor glamorous, like Amanda. Short, solid but shapely. Odd pale-grey eyes, almost white and much older than her face suggested stared out at him from a frame of dark hair unfashionably parted in the middle and tied back at the nape of her neck. The severity emphasized a face still soft with youth. _Pretty, though, probably, when she’s not under stress. She’d pay for dressing._

And yet, when she squared her shoulders and met his eyes, he saw the sword in her eyes. _No easy mark_._ And Immortal, whatever else she is. _She looked him up and down, measuring him.

“Well,” he said, and coughed. “This is awkward, isn’t it?”

Jeanne — _Jehanne_, he thought to himself. This one would use an older spelling. Jehanne cocked her head to the left. Her eyes lit up. And with that, she turned the sun on in the room, waking him entirely. “Awkward in what way, m’sieur?”

He gestured, indicating the room. “Coming to you under these circumstances.”

“The circumstances were hardly of your choosing.”  She pulled a stethoscope out of her jacket pocket. "Let me take a look at you.”

He nodded. _Fair enough_. While Jehanne poked and prodded at him, clearly coming to his own conclusion that he was no where cured of whatever opportunistic germ had chosen to rest in his system, Methos weighed further options and chose the one most likely to get him a reaction. “How is Cassandra?”

Curiosity brightened her into beauty; affection brought a wholly different attraction to her serene nun’s face, like warming his hands at a fire on a frosty morning. “At the moment, she’s sleeping. Without dreams, if my medication works as it should.”

“Doesn’t it usually, Doctor?” He heard, a little too late, some edge in his own voice, the mockery he could never quite erase from his soul.

“We are not mortals,” she said. The grey in her eyes darkened to charcoal. “And even mortals respond oddly to medication, you know.”

“On occasion, I’ve worked as a doctor myself. I know.” This was no time to muddy the waters by mentioning he’d written under the name Hermes Trismegistus, a millennium ago.

And then she adjusted her stance again, and met his eyes, once more like an Immortal over a sword. “I have the advantage of you, _m’sieur_. I am called Jehanne.”

He had to stop for a moment. He had to take the time to think of all the names he used, through all the centuries, think what name he wanted to give, although all the gods knew Cassandra’s words made all those _noms de guerre_ useless. He took a breath, then said, “The first name I remember being called was Methos.” ‘Methos’ was before the Horsemen. Back to a time when memory failed, when only a flash of a face or a single word in some unnamed voice rose to the surface. Before he knew what a Quickening was.

A nod answered that. Taken at his word. “You’re welcome here as my guest, Methos. I hope you find this comfortable —” She pursed her lips, looked around the room, and nodded. “Probably more comfortable than the abbey at present, although I have to admit I prefer the abbey.”

“Have you owned it long?”

“Not long. It was a gift. From a close friend.” Color came up in her face, as if she felt he might consider it the wrong kind of gift.

This kind of old-fashioned place, out of the way, was all the rage among the wealthy these days. It could have been dumping a white elephant, or it could have been a very expensive ‘thank-you’ gift. “He might have fixed the roof first.”

“I like fixing things,” she said, then grimaced and added, “or getting them fixed.”

So. Amanda’s friend, but apparently absent some of Amanda’s habits. Methos took another breath. He attempted the plunge once more. “Whatever Cassandra told you —”

“_M’sieur_ Methos —”

“Methos,” correcting her before he moved on to cross swords. “Whatever Cassandra told you about me, it was the truth.” A fragment of song, about the time of Woodstock: _‘You knew I was a snake, before you took me in…’_

Now she glanced down at her feet, then at her hands, and then back at him. “Cassandra would not lie to me.” She spread her hands out. Worker’s hands, hard and supple, scrubbed clean but still calloused. Eloquent hands, and eyes, for a peasant girl. More and more, it seemed she was remarkably different from Amanda, and from what he expected. “Methos, it’s not my place to judge you.”

“But it is Cassandra’s.” He stated it, not as a question, and saw a hotter flush rise in her face.

“Judgment is only rarely objective. The memory of evil still poisons her. It is not a poison I can drain. It is not a poison you can cure. It will be up to her.” The thick dark brows drew together. “This is Holy Ground, Methos. You are both welcome, but I will have no quarrels here.”

“I wish her only health and happiness.” That, at least, was sincere. He left out the fact that he’d wish her at least one and a half continents away.

“Then we want the same thing. For her.”

He nodded.

She half-turned away, then swung back to him. “I have done things I wish now I had not done — and, moreover, left undone things I should have done.”

It sounded so incredibly medieval he couldn’t stop himself from replying: “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God?” _And from what era are you?_

She cocked her head again. Then that wry smile lit up her face. It sent warmth throughout the room once more, and he had to catch his breath to stop himself from reaching for it. “And all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”

“St. Julian?”

“Yes.” Jehanne pursed her lips, then said, “I read a great deal.”

“Have you read Revelations?”

“Yes. What portion?”

“I suppose — Chapter 6, verse 8.”

She frowned a moment, mulling over his reference, and then nodded. “_Et ecce equus pallidus et qui sedebat desuper nomen illi Mors et inferus sequebatur eum et data est illi potestas super quattuor partes terrae interficere gladio fame et morte et bestiis terrae.”_ Perfect church Latin.

“Yes. They called me Death.” His words to Duncan echoed in his ears. “Me, and my brothers.” _Death, on a horse_. He ground his teeth a second. But with what Cassandra would have already told her, he needed words. The right words. “It was a different time.” _I owe no one explanations… __I will not plead. I will not beg, like a man facing a scaffold. I have never — _And he chopped that thought off as well, because it was decidedly untrue. More than once in his life he’d been driven to submission. Each time he said the same thing, ‘never again’, and then found himself wrong. _I even submitted to Kronos, again._

“They are all distant. All different times. Mine, as well as yours. As well as Amanda’s, and Cassandra’s,” she said. “_M’sieur_ — pardon me. Methos. You’re still recovering. Go and lie down. Or, if you like, there is a library, at the back of the guesthouse. The one in the abbey is bigger, but this has some nice volumes. If you continue out through the back, there is a path. It leads back to the abbey, through an arch into the courtyard. The herb garden, in March, is enclosed, so there is actually something growing.”

“Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme?” he said, on impulse.

“There is no sea here, nor peppercorns. But rosemary, yes, and sage.” She waved vaguely towards the back of the guesthouse. “Most of the books were here, in trunks, before I came, and I’m still finding more as I look. In various languages, as well as the Vulgate Bible which I first learned to read.”

He nodded. Books. Books had kept him sane, sometimes.

“Shall I come back to check on you?”

Methos hesitated, trying to make sense out of the words. Why would she ask permission in her own house?

“Amanda can come and tell me how you’re doing and what you need. She can read a thermometer, at least — I taught her how.”

_Offering me privacy?_ He was so unused to the formalities of host and guest that it took him aback. _Mi casa es su casa_, he’d said to Duncan at their first meeting. Then, later, the night after Bordeaux, after the final sundering of the Horsemen, _You’re a fool to trust Death._

Duncan had laid his hand against Methos’ face and said, _Then I must be a fool_.

But morning, coming out of the shared Quickening, had brought Duncan’s inevitable question about Cassandra, the only one that had no simple answers. _A thousand regrets. Five thousand._ “If you want to check on me, I would be happy to have your company,” he said.

“Well enough, then.” She glanced down at her watch. “No clinic today. I’ll be in the abbey if she — or you — need me. Try to keep from overexerting yourself.  I’ll just tell Amanda the ‘coast is clear’.”

In spite of everything, Methos laughed.

The sense of relief was still strong enough that he didn’t flinch when Amanda came back into the room. Instead, he relaxed and sat down on the couch. Amanda stood in front of him, arms crossed, face smoothed into ‘severe’ mode.

“Jehanne,” Amanda said, “says you should lie down.”

A perverse humor suggested itself, and a chance to get some of the information he needed. Methos promptly swung his feet up onto the couch and settled his head on the overstuffed arm. “Far be it from me to disobey my doctor.” He heard himself wheeze from the effort to make the gesture look easy.

She huffed and put her hands on her hips. “Methos, if you’re going to be difficult —”

“I’ve been sick,” he said, and eyed her, appraising whether or not she would fall for the bait. _You can never be sure with Amanda._

“When you start twisting things around to suit yourself, then you’re practically well.”

“When you start twisting things around to suit yourself, it’s perfectly normal, though, right?”

“Methos,” she said, and flopped down onto the chaise longue. “You know, you are one of the most —” She flailed at the air as if trying to thrash out words. “—_Difficult_ men I have ever had to deal with!”

_Better and better. _“Amuse me, and maybe I’ll fall asleep.”

She crossed her arms. “Amuse you? I am not going to pole-dance, even for you, darling.”

He rolled his eyes. “Amanda, I know as well as you do that you could do a strip routine which would galvanize the Moulin Rouge. No, no. Tell me a story.”

Amanda’s mouth twisted. She narrowed her eyes, and crossed her arms. “What kind of a story?”

“Your friend, Jehanne Martin. _Doctor_ Jehanne Martin. How did you meet her?”

She rested her chin on her hand, miming exaggerated confusion. “How does one meet people in the first place?”

He smiled. “Oh, come on now. A_man_da. At some medieval court? Or later that that? She doesn’t look quite the sort to be inspiring Mozart.” He was going to get a précis of Jehanne’s character, but not her background, apparently. _Yet_.

“Amadeus was entirely not her type. Jehanne’s absolutely serene,” Amanda said, sitting upright and scowling at him. “She’s very sweet, and I don’t mean that the way that most women mean it. She’s remarkably patient, the kind of person you can rely on no matter what, you just feel so calmed when she comes into a room —”

“Good in bed?”

“Methos!” She grabbed a decorative pillow from behind her and threw it at him.

He laughed. He laughed until he started to cough again, and found himself unable to stop.

Amanda’s scented arm wrapped around him. A towel thrust itself under his jaw, and he spit up disgusting globs of mucus for several minutes. His head spun.

“That wasn’t the sort of intelligent behavior I expect from you,” Amanda said. “Will you lie back down here and let me put something over you?”

Time to capitulate when you were beaten. “If you’ll help me, I’ll go into the bedroom.”

She supported him, assisted him in working his way across the living room to the nearest bedroom. He leaned against the wall while she yanked the covers down. She tucked him in — it could still amuse him, now, to see Amanda maternal. When she turned away, he reached up and caught his arm. “Wait.”

“What?”

“Stay with me.”

“You’re in no condition to —”

“I don’t have to sleep with you to want your company,” he said, and coughed again.

“All right.” She took her shoes off, then walked around to the far side of the bed, sliding under only the top layer of covers. “Try to rest.”

“Not much else I can do at the moment,” he said, and the fog swirled up around him again.

*** *** ***

She had fallen asleep. Jehanne sat up and rubbed her eyes.

Cassandra didn’t stir.

Had she left anything undone in the chaos of this day? All the important things had been cared for, except…

_Dinner_. Jehanne rubbed her eyes again, then rolled off the bed and went to wash her face and hands, waking herself completely in the process.

She closed the bedroom door behind her, leaving Cassandra to sleep. She padded down the stairs into the kitchen, where the kittens announced that for them, dinner time was long overdue.

“Greedy babies,” she said, but made up the plates of food as quickly as possible. Watching little pointed tails outlining the dishes brought her back to complete good humor.

Heels clicked on the flagging. Amanda poked her head into the kitchen. “Am I interrupting?”

The kittens said yes. Jehanne said, “No, of course not. Come in and sit down. You can help me think about dinner.”

“It’s such a pity they don’t have Chinese takeout up here.”

Jehanne sputtered, then laughed. “I have never learned to cook Chinese food. Vietnamese, yes, a little.” She glanced up at the heavens, invisible above her kitchen ceiling, and shrugged. “More than a little. I make very good fish sauce, so I’ve been told.”

“When were you in Vietnam?” Amanda opened the refrigerator and contemplated the interior.

“The nineteen-fifties. Mid- to late.” Jehanne frowned, counting the years, and said, with more conviction, “Around the time of the Hungarian Revolution. Which I heard about from a Russian soldier stationed in Hue.”

Amanda swung around, eyed her, and then said, “I’ll bet you were in a convent again.”

“You’d half-lose that wager. I was a nun, yes, but I was running an orphanage.” She could see the children, if she let herself drift: Thuy, Phuong, Luc — Ngao and Diem and Te.

“What stopped you?”

“A case of lead poisoning,” Jehanne said, dryly, to cover the tightness in her throat and the stinging in her eyes. “A Viet Cong soldier with a gun and a dislike for French nuns. It turned out badly, as those sorts of things usually do.” She reached in under Amanda’s arm to pull out a wrapped package of diced pork. “I think you’re going to get pork and apple pie tonight.”

“You still have apples left from the fall?”

“Freezers are wonderful things, aren’t they?”

Amanda chuckled. “So you are moving into the technological age.”

“Slowly, kicking and screaming. Has your friend been asking about me?” Jehanne ducked as Amanda opened the freezer.

The long slender fingers found a box of frozen apple slices and handed them down before shutting away the cold. “What do you want me to tell him?”

“There’s two frozen pie shells in there as well. I’ll need them.” _The long negotiations of Immortal versus Immortal on neutral ground_. Jehanne stood on tiptoe to pull her favorite skillet from the overhead rack. “What are you willing to tell me about him?”

“Hasn’t Cassandra already done that?”

Jehanne put a lump of butter into the skillet, then dumped in the pork. It sizzled as she stirred to keep it from sticking. “I need currents. Second cabinet from the far door, middle shelf. And there should be some pignola in a glass jar there as well.”

A drawn-out screech, as if Amanda had stepped on a kitten’s tail, interrupted.

“I also need to oil those hinges,” Jehanne said, irrelevantly, before jerking herself back to the subject. “Cassandra knew him a very long time ago. It’s almost impossible to put any sort of accurate timeline on it — she herself can only guess. You did tell me he was one of the older ones. Elek —” Her tongue nearly said ‘was’, but in time she caught herself and said, “Is old.”

An ice pick stabbed, just above her right eye. Jehanne pressed her free hand against her temple. The voice she knew as Saint Catherine’s sniped, not so much a scold as a reiteration. _He is dead. You know that he is dead._

_Is that why you’re speaking to me again?_

There was no answer, and she found herself still in the kitchen, stirring the browning meat. _Elek is dead. They don’t lie. I’ll never hear his voice again. I’ll never **not** hear them again._ Her eyes stung even more. She blinked against the fuzziness.

“Do you know how old your Elek is?”

“Not really.” The iron skillet she used carried the seasoning of twenty years or more: dragged with her, in fact, from Vietnam. “His first sword was made of bronze.” Elek waxed rather nostalgic of bronze. _‘Not as hard as iron, not as keen as steel, but there was a song to it when you held it. Whole symphonies of battle when you swung it.’_ She remembered one night, the night they became lovers, when she had lain across his body and traced the scar on his face as he rested, his eyes closed, and he had said: _‘That’s what bronze does. You taste it, afterwards, until it heals.’_

Amanda whistled. “Well. Old, then.”

“He said he’d known older Immortals. I don’t recall him ever mentioning a ‘Methos’, though. He really didn’t mention names much at all.”

“Mmm. Yes, Methos is one of the older ones.”

“Older than Cassandra.”

“Yes.” A smell of dried fruit drifted through the air. “How much?”

“A cup of each.”

Amanda passed over the currents. “Do you believe her?”

The currents spattered against the iron. “Yes. Do you?”

“What spices do you want?”

“Cinnamon and white pepper. I have salt here on the stove.” Jehanne shut off the heat, and wiped her hands before unwrapping the second pie shell and setting it on the counter. She put the first in the warming oven, then began the work of bringing the second shell up to a temperature which would let her roll it out and fit it atop the first.

“I believe her.” Amanda inhaled, then began speaking more quickly, as if releasing a dam. “He’s more dangerous than he looks. He gets by on charm, mostly, but he’s tremendously intelligent.”

“Most charming people are,” Jehanne interjected. “Most manipulative people are of above-average intelligence.” She glanced over her shoulder and grinned to take the sting out of the words. “As are most thieves who stay out of jail.”

“Well, yes. And Adam…” Amanda’s voice trailed off, then returned. “Methos is frightening, sometimes. I’d never play chess with him. He’s — he can be kind, if he likes you. Has a marvelous sense of humor, very dry and very wicked.” She smiled suddenly, and her eyes slit like a cat’s. “He’s fantastic in bed.”

“_That_ is more information than I require.”

“Sexual skill is _never_ too much information, darling.” Amanda’s lilt sobered almost as quickly as it had lifted. “But he’s lived this long and he hasn’t done it by being a fool or a hunter.”

“He fights?”

“He’s not Darius.”

Jehanne shook her head. “I never knew Darius. In fact, I’ve only met a few Immortals.” Elek had warned her of the dangers in encountering others of their kind. And the majority of her encounters had not been good — _well, excepting ones like Cassandra and Amanda._

“I wish you had. You would have liked him. Darius…” Amanda leaned back against the counter. She scooped a few pine nuts from the jar and crunched them, swallowed, then went on. “ Well, what I know of Darius’ background I know from Duncan. He could probably have given you more insight into being — well, like Methos. Though he was Roman, I think, so not nearly so old. Older than Duncan, though, and Duncan’s teacher, Connor. Now Ramirez, he was Connor’s teacher — he was older than Darius. I’m not certain if he was older than Methos, though. Ramirez lost a Challenge many years ago, before Duncan. But Darius was with us longer… Darius understood things and could explain them. He took a Light Quickening. Ended up a priest.”

Jehanne adjusted to that as she usually did to Amanda’s _coup de foudre_[_**[9]**_](http://archiveofourown.org/javascripts/tiny_mce/plugins/paste/pasteword.htm?1274712429#_ftn9) rambles. It took her all the time needed to roll out the top crust, take out the bottom, fill it, shape the top, and actually put the pie in to bake before she could pick up the conversation. Amanda said nothing. She didn’t even fidget. “But even though Darius was a priest, someone took his head.”

“A mortal took his head.” Wormwood and ashes illuminated Amanda’s voice.

Jehanne swung away from the Aga, unable to speak or breathe for a moment. “A mortal? What do mortals have to do with Challenges?” And then the horror of it made her mouth go dry. “And all that knowledge — lost?” _Lost forever._ A deeper voice echoed in her mind, St. Michael: dry and pedantic and stern, as always. _Nothing is lost forever._ She would have said, ‘how do you know’, but he tended towards pronouncements and warnings, and rarely answered questions.

Amanda took a long deep breath, then waved both hands, brushing the bitterness out of the air. “Yes. It’s too complicated and too long to go into now. What I meant to say is that Methos will fight, if given a reason. But he chooses to avoid the Game.”

“And yet you believe Cassandra.”

This time, she ran both hands through her hair, ruffling it into cockatoo spikes. “I know. I know: _l’affection avengle la raison_. But are any of us quite what we were when we first became Immortal? Jehanne, I’m a thief. _Le loup est toujours le loup_[_**[10]**_](http://archiveofourown.org/javascripts/tiny_mce/plugins/paste/pasteword.htm?1274712429#_ftn10). I have —” Her porcelain face slackened, then hardened. “I have committed murder. I would not do that now. I have taken Challenges when it’s unavoidable, and I’ll avoid them whenever possible.”

_Like now? You’ll protect him if necessary?_ That said a great deal about Methos. Amanda had not insisted she would protect Kenny. Jehanne stared at her, and Amanda stared back. The pie sweetened the air. Turning to the sink, Jehanne washed her hands, and stood for a moment examining her hands breaking the fall of the water. “I’ll see if he feels up to coming back here for dinner.”

“I could ask for you.”

“I’m his doctor. I’ll do it.” Jehanne dried her hands. She found herself wiping them longer than necessary, frowned, and tossed the towel onto the counter. “I don’t want to leave Cassandra alone. She’s sleeping, and she needs that, but if she wakes…”

“Yes. Are you sure you don’t want me to go with you?”

“No. Why don’t you make more coffee?”

Amanda rolled her eyes. “You’re going to be hanging from those damned ceiling beams!” But she turned on the water again and refilled the coffee pot. “I’ll keep an eye on Cassandra.”

“Thank you.”

*** *** ***

_Like being summoned to an audience by the Queen_.  And yet, there had been no command in Jehanne’s voice, just the pleasant alto offering him dinner, if he felt ‘up to it’. It would behoove him to have Jehanne on his side, if he could figure out how to arrange that.  Especially if Cassandra were to be at table.

But she wasn’t. Amanda asked, before he could work out a way to say it.

“Cassandra isn’t joining us?”

She could be avoiding him. She could have, for all he knew, decided to leave while leaving was good. _Waiting for you to get off Holy Ground_, he said to himself.

“She’s still asleep,” Jehanne said. “I gave her something to let sleep. Sleep’s the best thing for her now. Time to let the body and the mind heal.”

Unease shot up his spine, tingled at the nape of his neck. Duncan hadn’t known what might have happened to Cassandra in Bordeaux between her abduction and Kronos’ death. _And you didn’t ask when you had a chance, did you? _He answered himself, _Didn’t want to know, did I?_

He readjusted his plans here. Being good entertainment usually put his audience into an amiable mood, and the more amiable the better.

Methos wove some sort of tale out of a silly incident in Damascus, before Amanda’s birth but long after the Horsemen, when a young pre-Immortal pickpocket had attempted to rob him and ended up a companion. He stopped the story after the two women laughed, before any of the inevitable tragic ending.

One ironic eyebrow warned him that Amanda suspected what he was doing, but didn’t object to his scheme.

Jehanne had served an herb and baby lettuce salad fresh from the greenhouse with the pork and apple pie. “The oil’s not mine, of course. But it is Provençal; the village would faint in horror if I brought Italian olive oil into France. And someone would be bound to find out I had.”

For the final course Jehanne moved them all into the drawing room, a room sculpted out of the great hall, like her clinic. At one time, this had probably been the abbot’s study. After the abbot’s tenure, the room had been paneled, and the oak glowed beneath a ancient but well-polished chandelier. The fireplace drew beautifully; she stopped to toss a bit of some resinous incense onto it, scenting the room as if he’d stepped back a thousand years. Or into some medieval Catholic cathedral.

Over cheese and brandy — he noticed that Jehanne poured herself water, and only flavored it with a bit of the brandy — Jehanne said, “Amanda, you said you knew Mozart?”

_Ah, and so you’re not too proper to tease her with something I said._ He marked that and grinned at Amanda.

“I didn’t. I said he wouldn’t have been your type —” Amanda stopped, agape, then wadded her napkin up and threw it at him. “You were not supposed to tell her that!”

“Tell the truth,” Jehanne said, and leaned forward. “Did you or did you not know him?”

“Him and his brat of a wife.” Amanda grimaced, then said, “Well, she grew up at the end of it all. But still… All right, if you must know…”

Under cover of the snifter, Methos glanced at Jehanne. Her attention remained on Amanda, as if intent on not looking at him. He relaxed into the couch, although some corner of his mind remained aware that on the second floor, Cassandra slept. _The sleep of the just_, his mind offered, and he answered it: _the sleep of the drugged_.

_And this is still Holy Ground. While I’m here, I’m safe. We’re safe._

*** *** ***

Cassandra woke, not in the grip of a nightmare this time, but wrapped in rosemary and lavender, with the warmth and smell of a familiar woman next to her.

Jehanne shifted, and her head turned back and forth in her sleep. She muttered, or whimpered, and lay rigid a moment, then sighed and turned on her side. Cassandra rolled over and laid an arm across Jehanne’s side, burying her face in the silky dark hair that smelled of soap and rosewater.

Jehanne muttered something, and turned into the embrace. “Mmm. Are you hungry?”

“No.” She rubbed her hand up and down Jehanne’s back, trying to feel her spine through the flannel. “Not that way. I didn’t dream this time. What time is it, anyway?”

Jehanne lifted her head, squinting, and let her head drop back into the pillow. “Three a.m.” She ran her fingers through Cassandra’s hair, pushing it back from her face. “If I have nightmares, it’s always three a.m.”

“You were having a nightmare now.”

“_Nuit blanche_,” Jehanne said, a little more coherently, then ran her fingers through her tangled hair. “Yes. Not too bad this time.”

Cassandra unbuttoned the small pearl buttons that sealed Jehanne’s gown, throat to waist, stroking the creamy soft skin beneath, then lowering her fingers just far enough to brush the fine down covering her belly. “What are your nightmares about?” Jehanne knew hers; she had, somehow, never thought of Jehanne as having nightmares.

Jehanne’s thumb circled her nipple, already having delved beneath the flannel. In the firelight and moonlight, her eyes lived in shadows. “Fire. Mostly fire.” She kissed Cassandra; Jehanne tasted of coffee and spices, as if she’d been chewing cloves and cardamom seeds again. Some medieval habits died hard. She shifted into her Irish-accented English. “_The flesh is bruckle, the fiend is slee_—”

Without even pausing to think, Cassandra finished the stanza. “_Timor__ mortis conturbat me_[_**[11]**_](http://archiveofourown.org/javascripts/tiny_mce/plugins/paste/pasteword.htm?1274712429#_ftn11).”

A sigh, and Jehanne shifted to run the thumb over her lower lip. “Yes. The fear of death confoundeth me.”

“Still?”

“Elek broke me of the fear of fire during the daytime. He didn’t have much patience with fear. The nightmares — he could only wake me from the nightmares. He couldn’t keep fire out of my dreams. I see all their faces in the fire, Cassandra.”

“Elek Koronel?”

“Yes.”

Elek had been one of Jehanne’s generals, her fight master, her teacher, and her lover. Mentions of him, more than his name, were never common, and Cassandra’s curiosity almost won out over other interests. “Which faces?”

“My soldiers, and the _goddamns_ —” Jehanne checked herself. “Ah, they were no more profane than men today. And women, if we come to that. And the faces we passed on the roads… I can still hear the voices. _Pucelle, pucelle_ — the soldiers would shout it as I sat my horse before battles. And when we came through the towns, the villagers called out to me, and the little girls would run out and touch my greaves.”

“And that is in your nightmares?”

“It terrified me. It terrifies me still. I felt as if they already thought me a saint, and I was only — I was only ever Jehanne. I never wanted to be a saint, Cassandra. I only wanted to do what the voices told me to do.”

“To save France?”

“To save France and her people.”

Cassandra paused, with her hand on Jehanne’s warm thigh, feeling the muscles under the skin, the downy hairs prickling under her fingers. “What did — Elek think of you being a saint?”

A headshake and a heaviness in her voice answered more than the words. “He never said; he just woke me from the nightmares. He never expected me to be a saint. I don’t think he believed in saints. Or in God, for that matter. But sometimes — sometimes I think he wanted me to be a light he could find in the darkness.” And then, in one clove-scented breath, she said, “Wake me, Cassandra. Now, please.”

Cassandra kissed her and stopped talking.

*** *** ***

The bed shifted. Cassandra came up to consciousness and reached out. Her fingers caught moving cloth, and momentarily the motion stopped.

Jehanne’s lips brushed her forehead. “Let me up, _bébé_. It’s morning.”

“Have you been asleep long enough?” she said, blurrily, aware that there was sunlight through the window, but a weak sunlight pertaining to dawn or a cloudy day.

“Yes. I have a cow to milk.”

Cassandra sat up in the bed and blinked, trying to pull the world into focus. “What are you doing with a cow, Jhenette?”

“At the moment, not much besides milking her. There’s a cheese maker in the village; he comes by at nine and picks the milk up from the storehouse at the end of the lane. He’s promised in six months he’ll take me on as an apprentice, if I’m still interested. Meanwhile, I get some milk for myself and I make butter. It keeps me busy.”

“Do you need to keep busy?”

Jehanne paused, in the motion of pulling the nightgown over her head. Silhouetted in the sunlight, her skin was the color of Guernsey cream, and white against it across her ribs lay an old scar, a puckered crescent moon pointing from her hips to her breasts, to her nipples taut with exposure to the morning chill of the March dawn. “I find it more satisfying to spend my days in some sort of labor.” She folded the gown and laid it over the footboard, then opened the chest of drawers to collect garments. A scar on her shoulder and another on the opposite thigh reminded Cassandra that Jehanne had not only been in battle, but had nearly died from an arrow.

“_If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun_ — I don’t see anything wrong with breasts being dun,” Cassandra said. She wrapped her arms around her knees and rested her chin on them.

“Do _not_ begin the day by quoting Shakespearian sonnets at me.”

“And why not?”

“Because cleaning out the byre kills any atmosphere of romance surrounding the countryside, and then when I read them later they make me laugh.” Jehanne turned back, now dressed in sweater and flannel-lined jeans, and kissed her.

Cassandra held her a second, cupping Jehanne’s face between her palms, and said, “But your eyes are everything like the sun.”

“_And yet I tread upon the ground_[[12]](http://archiveofourown.org/javascripts/tiny_mce/plugins/paste/pasteword.htm?1274712429#_ftn12).” Jehanne pulled back, with one last pause to stroke Cassandra’s hair. “I’ll see you for lunch. Once I finish with Pluie, I’ll drive down to the village and buy breakfast before I open the clinic. Between twelve and two, probably, I’ll be back.” She dropped a kiss on the top of Cassandra’s head and clattered out of the room.

Cassandra lay back for several minutes, eyes closed, enjoying the warmth of the sun, even if the northern window didn’t offer as much of it as the east-facing window at the end of the corridor. Finally, she sighed, crawled out into the chill, and settled for a shower before dressing. _Modern plumbing is still not up to Roman standards. How I wished for Roman baths in Donan Woods!_ She pulled on her trousers from yesterday and a turtleneck under her cable-knit sweater. Breakfast and books. Two of the absolutes at the abbey: there would always be coffee, bread, and books.

To those absolutes she should probably add kittens. Kittens, books, and coffee made good morning companions. The abbey itself seemed to hum contentedly as she stroked one kitten’s fur and reread Saint Theresa of Avila. Cassandra lay the book down on the hassock and leaned her head back, scanning the paneled drawing room but not really seeing any of it.

The old clock in the great hall clanged. She counted the strokes. Eleven o’clock. Cassandra lifted the carafe and realized she was out of coffee. The kitchen, then.

But walking into the kitchen brought the courtyard into view. The herb garden was glassed in against the winter, one long corridor connecting east wing to west wing, with an archway leading out to the guesthouse.

Over the years of visiting the abbey, the herb garden, full of scent and flowers, humming with bees in spring and summer, had become Cassandra’s preferred meditation spot. Some days Jehanne had looked at her, then handed her shears and a basket, and a list of needed herbs. Other days she wandered out on her own. The garden had before brought peace; she went out today in hope of finding it again.

Cassandra opened the door from the kitchen and gasped at the unexpected warmth.

A thick sweater lay across the potting bench. _Amanda?_ With three Immortals in close proximity, she’d already become accustomed to the constant undercurrent of recognition. And then she saw him. She halted.

Stripped to his singlet and slouching, he was still impressive, wiry muscles threading the lean long arms: no evidence of having gone soft in the millennia past. At least his long-fingered hands were hidden in his pockets. A thousand years passed before she had finally stopped having nightmares about his hands. She found herself having moved forward, within arms-reach of him, and halted.

Methos turned, a little too suddenly, and had to catch his balance. The faint smile on his face disappeared. His spine snapped straight. “I’ll go.”

“No, I’ll go. You were here first.” She heard the words as they took shape and thought how ridiculous they sounded.

“Which means I’ve been here. Your turn.” He took a step to one side, then another forward. She recognized his expression:  the shuttered eyes and the mouth framed against exposure, the faint remote smile that evoked disinterest. Protecting himself. In the end, he had always protected himself.

Dark circles rimmed those shuttered eyes, and the remote smile emphasized new hollows in his face. _Jehanne meant it when she said he’d been ill._  The knot in Cassandra’s chest unraveled. “This is absurd! This is Holy Ground. There is no earthly — or unearthly — reason we can’t share this one square of Holy Ground! We’re sharing a larger space already, aren’t we?”

His head lifted. He met her eyes.

It was like watching an alley cat decide to eat in front of you. His ramrod spine relaxed. His dark eyes softened, the narrow lines around them smoothing out; his jaw unclenched. He performed a formal bow, the fencer’s salute without the _epée_. “By your leave, Madame.” Then, the last surprise:  he turned his back on her.

She stooped and plucked a needle-trimmed stem. Crushed between her fingers, it exhaled spice.

His head cocked. “Rosemary; that’s for remembrance.”

And there, that was Methos at his essence, his voice: stabbing one minute, disarming the next. Even raspy from coughing, his voice held an edge. Even hollow-cheeked and ill, his smile could charm feral dogs and then reveal a hidden guillotine. The voice and the smile:  could she have forgiven him everything else, even knowing what he had been, if his voice and his smile could not still undo her?

Jehanne herself must have a stronger love for Shakespeare than Cassandra had thought. Otherwise, why would these flowers grow in the herb garden? Cassandra crouched, broke off a burgundy blossom, and held it up. “Pansies; that’s for thoughts.”

“Thoughts.” He turned, carefully, on one heel — no stagger this time — and one corner of his mouth twitched in ironic commentary. Reaching down, just as careful to hold his balance,  he plucked the flower from her fingers. “Don’t blame Amanda. It’s not her fault she knew both myself and _Madame le Docteur_.”

Cassandra stood, then brushed non-existent dirt from the knees of her slacks. “Jehanne.”

“Yes. Jehanne. Your and Amanda’s Doctor Martin. The fault is not in her, but in our stars…”

_And if she were here to listen to you butcher Shakespeare. _She rolled her eyes and folded her arms. “Pompous doesn’t suit you. You use **my** first name.”

“I don’t know your current surname.”

“You’ve never checked?”

He shrugged, staring down at the pansy as he twirled it between index finger and thumb. “You’re not in the Chronicles.”

“Oh?” Joe Dawson hadn’t mentioned that. Of course, neither she nor Duncan had asked. She poked at the dirt with the toe of her slipper. “To what — or whom — do I owe that?”

Methos crushed the blossom between his fingers; its perfume smothered the rosemary. “You owe me nothing.”

She picked another pansy, then twirled it between her fingers. “I never owed you anything.”

He dragged in a breath, then let it go. “No. Never.”

Nothing at all interrupted the silence, while her breathing slowed, her heart slowed from hammering alertness to normal rhythm; while the stench of adrenalin and hatred evaporated from her skin. She picked no scent up from him, no acrid warning, nothing but the faint odor of soap and clean cloth — well-aired with no taint of moth balls. _Why think of  moth balls?_ Because the trousers he wore belonged to a man shorter by an inch or two. Not to him. He had apparently wandered from Bordeaux to Amanda’s in Paris — shorn of all belongings. The clothes, then, would have been supplied by Jehanne, but they were fresh clothes, not ones taken from one of the abbey’s many trunks. Odd, that; a man had been visiting Jehanne recently?

His shoulders twitched. Her attention snapped back to him.

His dark eyes swept up and stopped on hers. “I do regret what you went through.” This time he did not look away.

“That’s it? ‘I’m sorry’?”

His shoulders twitched again. “All the words mean the same thing. And all the words won’t change any of it.”

“No.” She set her teeth to keep herself from letting her eyes slide away from his. “Why Amanda? And why here?”

Another twitch of the shoulders, not quite a shrug, accompanied by a flick of his eyes away and then back. “I did Amanda a favor once. Amanda’s morals are — her own —” forestalling her, he added, “somewhat elastic, as are mine, but she pays her debts. Amanda knew Jehanne — your Doctor Martin.”

Cassandra considered it. Something still was missing. “That doesn’t explain why here.” Too late, she remembered Jehanne commenting that Immortals could develop pneumonia.

His mobile mouth tightened. Fear and fury at her fear brushed feathers across her skin. “I — managed to contract viral pneumonia. And apparently I was somewhat — delirious.”

“I see.” She pursed her lips, wondering if Jehanne’s God were an ironist. Rather a heavy-handed one, if so. “Well, I don’t blame Amanda.”

“That’s a relief. I don’t need something else for MacLeod to hold against me.”

“Duncan knows Amanda?” _A very heavy-handed ironist_. “Is there anyone among us who doesn’t know MacLeod?”

He nodded. “Oddly enough, according to Amanda, Jehanne doesn’t.” He dropped onto one of the two facing benches. “An incestuous bunch, aren’t we?”

“And who was **your** mother?”

The dark head snapped up. She met him glare for glare. Then his eyes flicked away once more. His shoulders dropped into the deceptively lazy posture, and that equally deceptive tenor returned. “Strange, isn’t it, how that seems to be the one insult transcending nearly every cultural barrier?”

“And all that cultural bias doesn’t make a difference in the way men treat women who **aren’t** their mothers.”

He rubbed his forehead but said nothing. Like punching a pillow — it gave without a struggle, then slowly resumed shape as soon as the fist moved. _If only he would fight_ — she had never known a Methos who would not fight. She had never known a Methos who would not seize an opportunity and turn it to his advantage. Cassandra folded her arms across her chest, and sent another volley. “So you’re sorry. You expect me to forgive you? We wander off into the sunset, hand in hand, best friends forever?”

His head jerked up again. She had the satisfaction of having rattled Death. “No. I don’t.”

“What do you expect?”

“Nothing.”

She snorted.

Methos shrugged. “Believe it or not, as you like.” He half-turned away, crouched, and stroked a leaf of sage, then plucked one of purple basil and ate it. Jehanne’s garden was built in clusters; rosemary next to pansies, daffodils and basil in the next bunch, sweet flowers next to savory herbs, with bunches of bound and drying herbs hanging from hooks on a center post.

“I do believe you,” she said. She folded her arms, studying him while he examined the basil varieties in the bed. “You know, except for this last encounter, I can’t recall any other time you lied to me.”

He twisted a little further, putting more weight on his one leg, something that might allow him to get to his feet faster, move away from her if needed. “I didn’t lie to you this time.”

“No.” She took another step forward. He didn’t flinch. “You lied to Duncan.”

“Lies are best kept simple and to a minimum number.”

_A slave — not her — one of the younger women, crouches in front of him. The girl trembles; she stares down at the tent floor, having just enough control to remember not to look one of their Masters in the eyes._

_His voice winds around the girl, like a man weaving a basket to cage birds, or scolding a child for failing a lesson. If he knows the other slaves hear him, nothing of it shows in his face. The world, for the moment, consists of the slave and her futile lie._

_Lua. That’s the girl’s name. A beautiful girl, with an innocent face, who watches the Horsemen from under her lashes, who had lied time after time successfully. Or so it had seemed._

_Methos looks down at her bowed head. He takes the coiled whip from his belt and begins uncurling it, measure by measure. “You should have kept in mind that we have been alive much longer than you have, and have acquaintance with more skillful liars. And you should have kept to the Liar’s Law —”_

“The less you have to remember, the less risk you run.” Cassandra quoted him. Even now, just saying his words aloud with the counterpoint of her memory of his voice — cool, lazy, amused — sent sweat down the back of her neck.

The enclosed area was much warmer than the abbey. The sun, rising, lit his face but cast shadows in his eyes. “I didn’t think you’d overhead that.”

“There wasn’t much that went on in the camp that I didn’t overhear one way or another. Or that I don’t remember having heard.”

One eyebrow lifted, but no other emotion broke through. “That’s a shame. I would have hoped you might have forgotten a little of it.”

“Have you?”

Methos unfolded, stretching to his full height, but kept his face averted, not looming over her the way he did in nightmares. “Not really.” He chewed another basil leaf, then put his hands in his front pockets, hunching his shoulders, almost as if shrugging away the question. “The mind’s like a rubbish room. You have things in the back that you know are there, but new things need to be put in, and so you keep shoving things back, further and further. Then, suddenly, something from the very back, so far back you didn’t think it still existed, something —” He shrugged. “Leaps over everything else and lands in your face. Grinning. Saying, ‘Thought you’d done with me, did you?’ “

“As big as life, and twice as natural,” she said.

He looked at her; an unexpected grin lighting his eyes. “Ah, Dodgson. Maybe I should make a memo of that, so that I—”

“Won’t forget it,” she said, finishing his quote as she so often did with Jehanne’s.

The grin didn’t completely fade — _a grin without a Methos_ — but he didn’t move again. She had seen him sit perfectly still, watching the horizon while on guard, sitting like that without a finger twitching, for hours. Some things hadn’t changed. _But I did surprise him just now…_ “Are you and Amanda coming over for dinner?”

He turned around to face her. “I thought our agreement —”

“I get the impression Amanda doesn’t cook, even if she does make very good coffee.” Cassandra crossed her arms. She looked at his face, drawn with weariness, and frowned at her unwanted twinge of sympathy. “And, frankly, you look as if you’ve lost a stone and could use something more substantial then basil leaves for your dinner.” The pansy was crushed in her palm. She opened her hand, smoothed out the crumpled petals and said, “This is Holy Ground. It’s as good a place as any to try aversion therapy.”

“For you?” he said. The remnants of the grin still sparkled in his eyes. “Or for me?”

“I imagine we’ll find that out, won’t we?” Giving him no chance to answer, she turned and walked back to the abbey. It wasn’t until she had settled back into a chair in the library that she wondered whether she had gotten the last word, or he had let her have it.

*** *** ***

Amanda had gone over earlier. Methos approached the kitchen cautiously, wondering what sort of audience the three women would make. Amanda hadn’t been previously acquainted with Cassandra; that gave him a slight advantage. Jehanne was still the unknown quantity. And he couldn’t trust Cassandra’s intentions, without Duncan there to control her.

But he was in no position to leave, yet. Not physically — Jehanne had examined him that morning, before going down to her clinic, and pointed out that his lungs were still affected. That he knew from his earlier encounter with Cassandra. From his own movements. He couldn’t risk the chance of running into another Immortal in this condition.

Besides, it was against his better judgment to vanish with this potential threat still lurking. Against what pride he had left to slip off like a condemned man evading his hangmen. Evading the ravens ready to pick his bones clean.

MacLeod’s voice echoed, sharp and insistent. _And Cassandra?_ One of a thousand regrets. Regrets. Not guilt — guilt had no place in his life. Let MacLeod be the bearer of conscience.

He heard Cassandra, first. Her first attraction, for him, had been her looks. Second had been the animation and fire in her. Last to be noticed had been her voice. He still enjoyed her voice — well, at least when at normal pitch. _Alecto, at least recently_.

He thought Amanda was aware of him. He wasn’t certain of Jehanne. But he could have been two rooms away and Cassandra would know it. He stopped in the doorway, listening, resting against the doorjamb and studying the three of them seated at the big deal-topped table.

“I don’t remember how long it was.” With her index fingernail, Cassandra drew patterns in the spilled sugar on the table: elaborate circles within circles, labyrinths and axes. “It was longer than a year. It might have been ten, or a hundred, or a thousand. I don’t know. There in the desert, when there’s nothing to write with, nothing to notice but the rainy season and the cold season, and then the hot months, all the days blur. It’s morning, and it’s night, and they go out, and then they come back, and —” she shrugged.

“How did you escape?” That was Amanda. Curious, neutral, laying no blame yet. The only real fault he could lay at Amanda’s feet, aside from a tendency to borrow credit cards which didn’t belong to her, was jealousy. He didn’t see that here. _Megaera, then, for her role_.

“Kronos came and took me from Methos’ tent. He’d never shown much interest in me before. He never showed much interest in anyone, that way. Occasionally, he and Methos would separate from us, or the four of them would close Kronos’ tent, and stay there alone, but…” She shrugged and shook her head again. “But this time, he took me. And Methos — didn’t stop him. He said nothing.” For several moments, she said nothing.

Jehanne reached across the table and touched her fingers.

Cassandra’s head lifted. She locked eyes with Amanda.

Amanda held the contact for some uncountable seconds, then broke it by leaning forward to pour more coffee into Cassandra’s cup.

“_Merci_,” Cassandra said, and brushed the spilled sugar into her palm before dumping it into the coffee. “Kronos — shoved me down on my knees, in front of him. He was still wearing his knife. I stabbed him. And then I ran.”

A frown drew lines taut around Amanda’s face. “There weren’t guards?”

“I don’t —” She cocked her head to the side, her eyes flicking back and forth, like a magpie picking up sparkling stones from a river. “There must have been. Methos — it was his turn to be on guard. They never tired easily — he and Kronos divided it between themselves.”

“Just the two of them?” Jehanne said.

“You could never trust Caspian,” he said.

They didn’t startle; somehow he had expected them to, but instead the three heads: two dark, one auburn — swiveled and focused on him, two pair of grey eyes, one pair of dark, waiting.

Methos motioned to the coffee pot. “May I?”

Jehanne got up and took a mug from the cabinet. Amanda filled it and offered him the cream, but he shook his head. Jehanne motioned to the fourth chair, the one across from Cassandra, and he shook his head again.

Cassandra said, “I’d rather not look up at you.”

_And maybe I’d rather not be reminded of looking down at you. _The wooden chair held him upright, as uncompromising as a straightjacket, but still better than a cross. “Caspian was like a four-year-old. Nothing held his attention for any length of time. He’d get distracted and then you wouldn’t know where he was.”

Jehanne had still not sat down by him — his chair was between hers and Amanda’s. Instead, she set the table for lunch: a stoneware platter on which various cheeses surrounded a stack of sliced bread and a selection of knives. Olives, butter, individual bowls of olive oil heavy with rosemary and thyme, and a bottle of red wine came next. The wine bottle slipped in Jehanne’s hand. He caught it before it hit the table, but his hand wobbled with the unexpected weight and he almost knocked over the bowl of olives. Cassandra grabbed the bowl. As she pulled back, his hand brushed hers. For a second, she looked at him, her eyes huge and startled, as she had looked at him the first time he had spoken to her.

He glanced away, coughed, and went on coughing until he had to get up and leave the table a moment. Finally, the weakness passed. He sat down and began talking again, more rushed than before.

“Silas — well, Silas was the other way. He’d get fixated on something to the exclusion of anything else. Some of the slaves were reasonable guards, but it had been a long day, and I didn’t trust anyone else to do the job properly.”

“So you let me go.” Cassandra stared at him.

He looked down at his hands. Finally, he met her eyes. “You chose to leave. I chose not to notice.”

“And you didn’t go after me?” Lines drew in around her eyes and mouth. The faintest hint of pain lined her voice.

He admitted it. “I never felt for you the way you felt for me. I never gave you what you were worth. Now, Kronos was —” Kronos had been nearly uncontrollable. Methos grimaced. “I laughed at him.”

Amanda whistled.

“It was the only possible response.” He felt his mouth twitch and let the sardonic smile escape. Mockery, the only possible response. “It was never _that_ difficult to manipulate him.” _Well, not until Bordeaux._ “And if I thought it — amusing, then why would he waste the time on retrieving one female slave among so many?”

“As long as nothing was more important to you than he was,” Cassandra said.

He swallowed coffee. It tasted less bitter this morning. “Kronos was a jealous man. He thought he had reason to be, with me.” He selected one of the olives, rolling it between his fingers.

“Which made you more important to him than Caspian and Silas.”

If he closed his eyes, Kronos would rise up in the shadows. There would be wine on the table, like now, and wine on their breath, and his brother would be smiling in the way that hinted he knew exactly what Methos was thinking. Kronos had liked his olives green, unripened, brine-soaked with grape leaves. Methos liked the ripe ones, the color of eggplant, tasting of the sea and smelling of sunshine. “I could think about something more than my belly and my balls. He could talk to me. The others — they were amusing. They were company. They were — cohorts. They weren’t brains.”

“Did you love him?” Cassandra’s pupils widened, swallowing the grey iris; she hadn’t meant to let the words out, then. He could still startle her — nice to have the evidence..

“I don’t know,” he said. “He was my brother. We —” Methos paused, stared into his coffee a moment, then shook his head, sharply. “We escaped Hell together. We shed blood for each other. I don’t think love came in to it.” He drained the cup and Jehanne poured him another. “Thank you.” He turned back to Cassandra. “Love is too simple a word. And too complex. I can’t answer you; I don’t know the answer.”

Cassandra’s lashes dropped, veiling her thoughts. Then an echo of his own mockery twisted her mouth and she said, “But you called him your brother. And you arranged for his death, didn’t you?”

_I have never been able to imagine Kronos dead. Even with his dead body in front of me, I thought he would get to his feet and laugh at me._ “Yes, I plead guilty to assisted fratricide. Shall I try to placate the three of you and call you the Kindly Ones?”

“Are you afraid to speak of the Erinyes?” His mockery bled into her eyes.

Methos shook his head again, shaking off the memories. “Speak _of_ them? I have known each of the Furies intimately,” he said. “Did you doubt that?”

“Not for a moment.” Cassandra straightened, then folded her arms. “Not after Kronos’ tent.”

“You knew Kronos. You knew me. What the hell did you think I was?”

“I thought you were a god!”

Methos jerked back from the blow. She sat there, the focus of the universe surrounding him. _A god; yes, I was a god_. “And if you pleased the gods, they protected you, and if —”

The silence waited. She answered it with a quote. “_If the gods do evil, they are not gods_. Did you know Euripides?”

“No. Did you?”

“Yes. It concerned him too much that I was a woman.”

He pressed his lips together and nodded. “Rather rigid that way, the Greeks.”

The squeak of wood on stone jarred him a second. Jehanne, pulling out her chair. _And you, then, are Tisiphone?_ The scent of herbs startled him: rosemary and lavender scented Jehanne’s skin, her clothes, her hair — like the garden. Cassandra was musk and incense; Amanda, Paris perfume and champagne. It had been some time since he’d been acquainted with scents so basic and close to the earth.

“Not exactly a problem that’s vanished since the Greeks,” Jehanne said.

Amanda chuckled. “But if you figure how to use it against them...”

An appreciative laugh from Cassandra punctuated that. Jehanne smiled, but said only, “Excuse me a moment,” and bent her head. It took a few seconds of her silence before he realized that her lips moved.

The other two women were quiet, and he sat still, absorbing the even more unusual sensation of a hostess who said grace over her food.

She raised her head, took a piece of bread from the platter, and passed the platter to Cassandra, on her right. Cassandra passed it to Amanda, and Amanda, to him. As normal as if the entire thing were scripted. As if the stoneware didn’t feel as if it weighed twice what he could lift.

“The herb garden is superb,” he said. “You must spend a great deal of time on it.”

“Thank you. Once you get it into shape, a few hours a week maintains it.” Jehanne poured water for herself, but filled Amanda’s glass with wine. She shrugged, and said, “I’m not very good at relaxing.”

“You’ve been here a while, then.”

That stopped her. She took a piece of bread apart, frowning, and then said, “Seven… no, eight years.”

“That long?” Amanda frowned. “Somehow I didn’t think you’d been here quite that long.”

Jehanne said, “Time flies when you’re having fun.”

Amanda pursed her lips, then wagged a finger at her. “We’re not bringing up my age here, are we?”

Methos choked on his wine. He began to suspect that Jehanne was not the _naïf_ she pretended to be, and that she was doing something he had once or twice done himself — play the clown for an audience.

Cassandra said, “In the present company, Jehanne’s the infant.”

“I resent that!” Jehanne sputtered. When they all looked at her with interest — and in Methos’ case, amusement — she added, “I don’t dispute it. But I do resent it.”

Amanda started to laugh.

“What?” Jehanne’s alto lifted almost to soprano. “It’s not as if I became Immortal the day before tomorrow.”

“Yesterday,” Cassandra said, as she tore a corner off a piece of bread and dipped it in oil. She ate, as always, without a single drop of oil falling or otherwise marring her appearance. “It’s ‘born yesterday’, Jhenette.”

“Fine. It was not as if yesterday I was born.”

Amanda put her head in her hands and giggled.

“Hmpf.” Jehanne pursed her lips, buttered a piece of bread, and then ate it, thoughtfully, in a way that Methos distrusted. Then she smiled at Cassandra, and Cassandra winced. “Since I’m the youngest, you have to be nice to me, so we’re going to spend the evening doing what I want.”

Amanda said, “Please tell me she doesn’t play bridge.”

“She doesn’t.” Cassandra sounded strangled. “She plays Mah Jongg.  Old Style Chinese, two-point hands or better, and thrower pays for all.”

“Pays?”  The idea of betting might be amusing, or it might not.

Jehanne said, “Points. I learned long ago never to bet with anyone older than I was.”

He choked on his wine a second time. This time, Amanda patted him on the back and kept him from going into a new fit of coughing.

“Do you know how to play Mah Jongg, Methos?” Jehanne’s eyes sparkled.

Once he stopped coughing, he admitted, “Yes, I do. I think I may regret it tonight.”

Cassandra poured herself another glass of wine. “If you don’t regret it tonight, you’ll be hooked.”

He tried not to smile. “And which was your fate?”

“She got hooked,” Jehanne said, then winced. “Do _not_ kick me, Cassandra. It’s not my fault.”

A toss of her auburn hair answered that. “And who taught me to play?”

Jehanne’s eyes widened. “You call it playing?” She winced again. “Ouch!”

Cassandra glanced sidelong at him. “You know what the advantage to kicking an Immortal is?”

“No,” he said cautiously. “What?”

“The bruises are gone in a couple of hours.” She smiled sweetly. “Or by next morning.”

*** *** ***

The ancient clock clanged, and midway through, an odd clunk punctuated. “Oh,” Jehanne said, looking up from her tiles. “I have to rewind the clock tomorrow.” Then her eyes widened, and she groaned. “It’s midnight.”

“Do you turn into a pumpkin?” Amanda said, probably because she was 50 points ahead.

“No, nor do I wear glass slippers. But I have a cow to milk in the morning, unless you want to do it for me.”

“Cows smell.”

Jehanne rolled her eyes. “Well, yes, of course they do. They smell like cows. You’re winning. Do you want to pick up tomorrow?”

Amanda sighed. “Very well. Cassandra?”

“Fine with me. Methos?”

He almost jumped at the sound of his name in her voice, but said, with what he thought was commendable presence, “Certainly.”

Jehanne picked up a wool throw from the couch. “If I cover this, then even if one of the kittens gets in, there might not be too much disarrangement.” She glanced up at the windows, six narrow arched windows veined with black lead. Drops of melted frost trickled down the outside. “It’s likely to be cold. Maybe you should go through the garden.”

The greenhouse’s back door opened at the archway leading the path across the back to the guesthouse. Even at night, it held in heat.

“I’m all for warmth,” Amanda said. She stretched her hands out to the fire.

“Do you want to borrow a jacket?” Jehanne grinned, and picked up another throw. “Or a blanket?”

“Now you are bringing up my impecunious youth.” Amanda sniffed. “I’m not going to freeze between the garden door and the guesthouse.”

The garden retained the warmth of the day. As soon as they opened the greenhouse door, Amanda gasped and stopped dead. “Eww. Maybe I will freeze between here and the guesthouse.”

Methos shivered. “I’d forgotten how cold it gets in the mountains at night.”

“This,” Amanda said, “from the man who chooses to spend winters in Katmandu.”

He shrugged. “I don’t go outside when it’s winter in Katmandu.” He glanced side-long at her, gauging her mood through her face. “You don’t have to come back with me, you know. I can be expected to give my parole.”

“Of course you can.” She tucked her arm through his and reached up to kiss the side of his face. “But I brought you here and I want to keep you from feeling —”

“Abandoned?”

She chuckled. “Oh, I’d say you frequently feel abandoned…”

“Witch.” Methos laughed, though, and took his arm from hers only to wrap it around her. “Will that keep you warmer?”

“For the moment.” She huddled against him until they got into the guesthouse. Once inside the heated building, they both sighed and straightened. “You know,” she said, “you have to go on playing once you start.”

“I am well aware of that,” Methos said, and gave it the same sardonic twist she had. “And it seems I’ve started. However, I’ve survived this long, so I give myself reasonable odds to continue surviving.”

“So do I.” She started down the hallway towards the back bedroom, which she’d laid claim to earlier.

“Are you going to tell me about your friend Jehanne?”

Amanda paused. She did not look back. “I’ve told you everything important.” She sauntered on into the bedroom, but left the door open.

Wide open.

He followed. He crossed his arms and leaned against the door jamb. “What do you define as important?”

“That this is Holy Ground and she’s a very sweet person.”

He designed his laugh to hit a nerve. “Sweet. Whenever a woman tells me that another woman is sweet, I know she’s either a complete nonentity or they’ve known each other for about ten minutes.”

Amanda tossed her shirt across the room onto the chair in front of the Louis-Quartorze dressing table. In any other place, he’d have marked the piece as a reproduction, but here he couldn’t be certain; it might be authentic. The throw nearly missed, which strongly suggested his arrow had hit the mark.

_MacLeod would know_. He shook off the thought and focused on his subject. Subjects.

“Neither one,” Amanda said. “If by now you can’t tell she’s not a nonentity, then you’re suffering from a worse virus than I thought. And we’ve known each other about… hmm. Four hundred years or so.”

“Well, you did say she was younger than you were.”

“_Duncan’s_ younger than I am.”

“Is that a comparison?”

Amanda threw her brassiere after the shirt. “No. Certainly not.” She swung around to face him, with her fists on her hips and her bare breasts jiggling with the movement. “Are you going to join me or just interrogate me about Jehanne?”

“Which would you prefer?”

She stopped dead, agape. “Methos!” She dragged a loose pillow from behind her, then threw it at him.

He caught the pillow and laughed. “I take that to be the former?”

Amanda dived across the room, yanked the pillow away from him, and pummeled him with it. “Of all the ungrateful, immature old male Immortals I have ever known —!”

He laughed until he could not catch his breath. When he started gasping, Amanda paused, and then dropped the pillow. “Methos? Are you — here, sit up, are you all right,” she babbled at him, trying to pull him upright, her eyes widening with unfeigned concern.

“Help me,” he said, still gasping, and threw an arm around her shoulders. This was easier than the other day. Immortality’s benefits finally seemed to be kicking in a little. Then he took a deeper breath, feeling strength flooding back in, and that strength let him pull her into him as he added, “Breathe.”

She tried at first to pull away from the kiss, but he held it just a little longer than was comfortable before letting her free.

“That helped,” he said.

One manicured fist thumped him in the shoulder.

“Ouch!”

“Bastard!” she said. “What do you mean, scaring me like that and then —”

“You liked it.” He grinned at her. “Admit it.”

“I —” As often happened in the verbal part of the fight, she cut off her words, fuming in silence.

He crooked a finger at her.

She shook her head.

Amanda was going to be difficult, again. He sighed, let his smile quirk up a little further, and then ran his hand up her arm, over her shoulder, then rested his fingers against the pulse in her throat a moment.

She swallowed.

He crooked his finger at her a second time. This time, she lowered her face to his, her lips almost touching his. Methos moved his arm around her shoulders a second time, making a slow ballet of it, and drew her to him. He drew her down onto her bed, letting himself fall backwards, drawing her with him.

“Help me breathe,” he said.

“For you? Any time,” she said.

*** *** ***

Sunlight spilled across his face. Methos rolled over and buried his face in the pillow.

Light moved in straight lines.

But this light, he swore, curved, stealing under his cheekbone and wedging itself between the pillow and his closed eyelids. He lifted his head and stared down at the impudent glare streaking the bed. _Can’t be much past dawn._

Next to him, Amanda shifted only enough to pull the covers over her head.

Birds warbled and the wind knocked a tree branch against the window. The image of Silas, working with his axe in the forest, as if not a day had passed since the palms of the oases, spread itself out in front of his eyes like palm fronds, each one a taunting memory. But Silas had chosen a European forest, green and ancient, with the loam and moss thick under his feet. He hadn’t chosen the desert. He’d chosen a place far from computers and cities, tender of horses and birds.

The ambient music of nature sounded as if he’d woken up in the middle of a Disney film. _Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs_ or something sentimental like that.

Another bird. That particular cluck was not a bird of the woods, but a bird domesticated. Chickens. Apparently, Jehanne kept chickens, along with a cow she needed to milk daily. Just before or after dawn. He considered it and decided he had heard a rooster earlier.

Beyond the chickens, he heard a contralto singing. Chanting. He rolled over and pushed himself up on his elbows to listen. Plainsong. Soaring leaps in the music, and faintly familiar…

_O Virtus Sapientiae_. Hildegard. Jehanne, also, apparently, knew enough music to accompany her milking with Gregorian chants. Slightly off on the highest notes, though… And there, that one phrase, she was a full quarter-note to the bad.

His mind, irrelevantly, brought up the female chorus behind Leonard Cohen singing “Suzanne”: _And she feeds you tea and oranges that come all the way from China_… Definitely somewhere out of the Twilight Zone.

He disentangled himself from the jumble of duvet, blankets, and sheet. He moved quietly from the room, out into the living room, and across that into the bed he’d slept in previously. He grabbed the woolen robe over the footboard. With the robe belted tightly around him, he unfastened the bedroom window and pushed it ajar. A gust of chilly air swept in over him.

Swinging his head back and forth, he tracked the direction of the singing. Once he determined that, he shut the window. The day before, Amanda had put clothes away in the closet for him, an armful given her by Jehanne, along with his mended boots. He selected a heavy woolen sweater, lined wool trousers too short in the legs, and a knit cap, and wondered who had worn them before he had. The friend who’d given Jehanne an abbey in desperate need of restoration? _A male friend, then_. He tucked the trousers into his boots to hide the length.

Amanda didn’t emerge as he slipped out of the front door. But if given the chance, Amanda would sleep until noon. He’d probably come back to find her still asleep.

The abbey’s chatelaine backed around the barn, coaxing a Guernsey cow to follow her. She turned and stopped, shading her eyes with her free hand, peering in his direction.

He waved. She nodded.

She tugged gently at the rope, and the cow shifted from one hoof to another, then plodded in her wake. Something about the animal’s gait seemed — off. When Jehanne and the cow reached him, he realized why. The cow had one hind leg shorter than all the others, and the hock on the bad leg cocked at an odd angle, making her lame.

The cow sheered off as they neared him, casting a leery glance at him, still chewing her cud even in her wariness. Jehanne looked back, clicked her tongue and murmured nonsense. The cow thought it over, sighed, and took a few steps closer. “Good morning, mon — Methos.” Jehanne swung her head back to him, then jerked her chin sharply to get her braid off her shoulder and hanging out of the way. “How are you feeling this morning?”

“As if I should listen to Cassandra’s warnings about your skill playing Mah Jongg,” he said.

A laugh like warm honey rewarded him. She cocked her head towards the fence some hundred yards from the back of the guesthouse. “Walk with me, yes? I need to put Pluie into the field.”

He adjusted to her much shorter stride, and kept an eye on the ground. If she walked the cow this way daily, then he needed to watch underfoot. “Pluie?”

“I found her —”

“In the rain,” he finished.

She shrugged and offered him a grin along with, “Yes.”

“She’d just wandered off?”

A second shrug answered, but then she enlarged on it. “She was just a few months old. I heard her crying in the rain. Never knew how long she’d been in the gorge, but I think she must have fallen in and broken her leg sometime before that. Somehow it had healed and she could still walk, so I was able to get her up the side of the hill and up here.” She said nothing for a moment,  skirted a cowpat, then added, “I was relieved to be able to put the rifle away.”

“But you eat meat.”

A faint frown cast a shadow. Then she spoke, slowly, thinking out the words in an almost tangible manner, as if she were a potter casting a bowl. “Yes. And I have killed my dinner in the past, and still do. I have also accepted Challenges.”

“I’m glad to see you won.”

Her mouth twitched.

“And,” he said, “I’m taking a risk, but I assume you’ve killed mortals as well.”

The faint smile vanished; the stern set to her mouth intruded. Her voice turned as chilly as the morning air. “When necessary.”

A tarp-covered mound stood to one side of the gate, as tall as Jehanne herself, and Pluie stopped to examine it. Methos stepped forward to unlatch the gate and pull it open.

“Thank you.” She unhooked the rope from Pluie’s harness and slapped the cow’s rump. Pluie plodded forward into the field, heading for the pond in the far corner.

Methos latched the gate. He turned to see Jehanne pull back the tarp, revealing a pyramid of hay bales. She moved around the pyramid and took a pitchfork, then pulled the top bale onto the ground. When she started to stoop to pick it up, he said, “Here, I’ll do that.”

“You’re not well enough yet,” she said, mildly. “But thank you anyway.”

“You’re welcome.” He watched her pitch the hay over the fence into the field. She was right, too, damn it. Deep breaths brought on coughs unexpectedly. “You’re an astonishing woman.”

She startled. A soprano squeak turned into, “Me?”

“Of all the people I’ve known, you’re the only one who’s been told how old I am and doesn’t at once pepper me with questions about the past.”

Jehanne stuffed her hands into the back pockets of her jeans. “Ah, well, do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

He prodded a little further, seeking the details Amanda wouldn’t give him. “No questions at all?” He could tell a good deal about a person by the questions they asked. Even knowing that Methos was five thousand years old, Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod had never thought to inquire more deeply into that history until Cassandra’s revelations. The Highlander, for all his talents, skills, and above-average intelligence, demonstrated a suicidal tendency to believe in humanity’s nobility.

She halted. She squinted into the sun, then cocked her head, studying him. “Has the world grown better or worse in the last three thousand years?”

“What, since Cassandra was born?” A stiff breeze blew across the ground, grazing his face with leftover winter. He watched her eyes grow dark, the pupil swallowing the iris, with this new surprise. “Ah, Jehanne, I’m older than Cassandra by many years.” When he saw her struggle not to ask the question logical to this latest revelation, he shook his head and smiled at her. “To answer you: it’s grown larger. It’s better and it’s worse. But to tell you how, I’ll have to think it over.” He threw out the lure again. “Nothing else? Nothing at all?”

“How old?” she said, the words leaping over her reserve. Red flushed up her cheekbones; she dropped her head and stared at her Wellingtons.

“I’ve lived so long that all those calendars have been lost.” They had reached the guesthouse, and he shifted to put the wind at his back. “I took my first head when I got my first sword. That was somewhere around five thousand years ago.”

“Have you known any one of us older than yourself?”

“I don’t know.” Faces danced across his mind, memories exploding like a burst of fireworks, beautiful and destructive. “Calendars differ, after all. I knew an Egyptian who called himself Ramirez; he was about seventeen hundred years old by the current calendar when he lost his head.” Three faces blotted out the other memories. “Caspian and Silas were younger than I was, I think, by a few hundred years. I was never certain about Kronos.” He leaned on the stone wall of the house, finding that just the early-morning sun had warmed it pleasantly. “And I say again, you’re an astonishing woman.”

“And I say still — Me? Why?”

He almost reached out to brush some loose hair back from her face, but redirected the gesture and crossed his arms, tucking his hands into his armpits, both for control and for warmth. “Almost anyone else would have asked me if Jesus the Christ were a real person.”

“Oh.” She blinked. “Oh. Does that make any difference?”

“What? Whether he lived or not?”

“I believe he lived, yes,” Jehanne said. She looked past him; her voice acquired that depth, that slow intensity that had already piqued his curiosity. “If he were no more than a prophet and a good man who followed God, that would be enough. If he didn’t, if he’s a composite myth —there is truth in myth. If God does not exist, then if we need him, we would invent him.” She jerked her head and shrugged impatiently. “Have invented him. Will invent him. And some of us, at least, will always believe that there was a man who was the son of God, whose divinity inspired not only devotion, but the desire to be like him.”

“And his church?”

This head-jerk was sharper. “Ah, let’s leave the churches to God. There’s more than enough to let him worry over.”

“And what about the Devil?”

Jehanne scowled, but not at him. In very careful English, sounding as if she’d learned her English from an Irishman, she quoted C. S. Lewis. “_You do not make devils out of bad mice, or bad fleas, but out of bad archangels._ I don’t know about the Devil. I do know about evil.”

“But the devil didn’t make them do it?”

Her jaw tightened a moment. Then she shook her head again. “A man chooses evil. He may not have the knowledge to know it is evil. But men choose the evil they do.”

Methos let his voice drop and turn soft, as he had done with other quarry. “Don’t they say that ignorance is no excuse?”

“Well, if you don’t know blowfish can be toxic, you will die,” she said, still considering it. “And if you play with nitroglycerine, it will explode. But —” Without warning, her eyes met his, holding him as still as if she’d gaffed him. “Our knowledge of evil has changed, hasn’t it? If today is both better and worse than it was three thousand years past?”

He laughed. “A direct hit. I’d like to spar with you sometime, Jehanne. Have you known Amanda long?”

“Long enough for her to bring you to me,” she said. Her gaze slid sideways; the glint of laughter showed, a fencer delighting in evading his foil. “_Did_ you know him?”

Parrying that would have been giving her the point. He shook his head. “I was nowhere near Israel at the time. I was, I think, in Tibet. Or in the Caucausus. By the time I returned to Greece, there were only the legends.” He tilted his head back and looked down his nose at her, but grinned. “Before that, I knew at least one of the Delphic Oracles. Hard to tell, with the masks, and the gases made all the voices sound pretty much alike.” He tapped his lower lip, then added,  “I think I might have met one of the men who wrote the _Tao te Ching_, and I did meet Confucius.”

“You weren’t in Rome?”

“I was not enamored of Roman government or Roman laws. Or of Greece under Roman rule.” He remembered telling Duncan one thing, as a boast, and repeated it here. “I did know Helen of Troy.”

Jehanne’s face lit up; once again, it warmed the world around her. “Was she beautiful?”

He made a face. “Not nearly as beautiful as Cassandra or Amanda. Or Sophia Loren, for that matter.” He let his mouth quirk, and made her a deep court bow. “Or as my present company.”

“Ah,” she said, with a dismissive wave and a roll of her eyes, “_pas trop mauvais. L’habit ne fait pas le moine_[_**[13]**_](http://archiveofourown.org/javascripts/tiny_mce/plugins/paste/pasteword.htm?1274712429#_ftn13)_._”

Methos tossed the proverb back at her. “I only flatter when a woman will fall for it. Your manner suits you perfectly, _mademoiselle_. And you are the wrong gender for a monk.”

This flush came from the response he wanted to provoke. Jehanne looked away and bit her lower lip. “_Touché_. Would you come up to the house for breakfast?”

“Shall I try to wake Amanda?”

Her eyes came back to him, her eyebrows arched. “Are you usually so eager to have things thrown at you?”

He grinned and shook his head.

“Then permit Amanda to wake herself. Come on.” She tugged on his sleeve, familiar and friendly. “I’ve only had coffee this morning.”

*** *** ***

Cassandra glanced up from the stove as the kitchen door opened. She felt her heart jerk in her chest, then return to its normal beat… _Someday that will stop. Someday soon I’ll stop feeling as if the world falls in when he walks into a room. _“Ready for more coffee?”

“I am always ready for more coffee,” Jehanne said. She dragged her feet across the boot scraper, then bent to unlace them before working them off and setting them aside.

Methos looked over her head at Cassandra. “Good morning.” Polite, not presuming anything. _Like a damned pillow_.

“Good morning,” she said. “Jehanne, how many eggs do you need?” Amanda, apparently, was really not an early riser.

“There’s only two dozen. I thought I’d make a quiche for dinner.”

“And have you gathered today’s eggs yet?”

“No, I haven’t. But I expect Suzanne has…” Jehanne bent down again and picked up a piece of paper from the floor. It had been folded into an origami frog. “She gathers them in the morning, except Sundays, and every other day she gets the entire harvest. The other days I take half. Except for Sunday, of course.” She undid the folds, scanned whatever was there and said, “Ah. A full two-dozen today. That should net her a few francs.”

“Another one of your strays?” Cassandra softened her voice to take any sting out of the words.

“As I recall, you were once rather pleased I had a soft spot for strays,” Jehanne said dryly. “If I feel ambitious, I’ll make a soufflé, but I don’t like to try one with more than 8 eggs. And 8 eggs feeds four, but leanly.” One hand rested on Cassandra’s shoulder a few seconds, then pulled away as Jehanne turned to the sink. _Like a breath to a man struggling to learn to swim. _

Cassandra poured a cup of coffee, took a calming breath, then turned, and held it out to him. “Coffee?”

One eyebrow lifted. He stepped forward. As he took the cup from her, their fingers brushed, and a faint shiver ran down her spine, a spider with delicate venomous legs. _Morte la bête, mort le venin. Only dead men never bite._

“Thank you.” He slid into the seat furthest from them, his back against the wall.

“Cream’s on the table,” she said, then deliberately turned back to the Aga, bending over to open the oven door and remove a tray holding a dozen croissants. “I found the dough you left to rise, Jehanne.” Even with the potholders, the aluminum was hot. She put the tray on top of the cooker and shook her fingers.

“Mmm. I can tell.” Jehanne dried her hands. “Did you find —”

Cassandra held up the breadbasket.

“Ah. Of course.”

“Still in the same place. Do you ever rearrange things?”

“Well, yes.” After a moment, Jehanne added wryly, “When I don’t have Turkish soldiers poking around in my kitchen telling me my nuns are hiding deserters.”

“I wasn’t.”

“No, you were feeding orphaned Turkish children. I do remember. As I said, strays.”

The stink of Üsküdar rose up at Cassandra’s feet. For a moment memory smothered her, smote her blind and deaf. “The French were well-provisioned. We could spare it.”

“Unlike the English.”

“The English,” Cassandra said, “have more than once been bloody fools.”

Methos muttered, “They’ve got nothing on the Scots.”

She swung around with the basket in her hands. He was pouring more cream into his coffee. “On that I fully agree with you.”

“The Ladies from Hell,” Jehanne added. “I heard a Boche —” She cut herself off. “Ah, _bah_. A German prisoner of war after the Somme —”

“First or second battle?” Methos’ ears had pricked up.

“First,” was the answer. She looked at Cassandra. “You were in Belgium most of that war, weren’t you?”

“Yes. God, the hell of it. A mile in front of the German army, or to the west of it, the east of it — just moving the children constantly, listening to the barrages, the flames eating wood and cracking stone, the screams of hostages dying. It soured me on German _Kultur_.” She brooded on it a moment, then added, “Worse than Üsküdar. Scutari, rather.”

Calculation flashed through Methos’ eyes, visible out of the corner of her eye, and Cassandra glanced at Jehanne. The insouciant shrug answered her, although Jehanne’s lips were pale and lines showed stress around her eyes. _The mention of fire. I didn’t think… But she’s still uneasy with uncontrolled fire…_

“Yes,” Cassandra said. “We met in the Crimea.” She looked at Jehanne. “Was it 1854?”

“No, 1853, late in the year.. You came in with some nuns from another convent.” Jehanne frowned, trying to remember.

“From Wallachia. Another Convent of the Sacred Heart. We had to leave after a Russian division invaded.” Cassandra tore off a corner of her croissant, ate it, and then snapped her fingers. “Oh, of course. The Turks declared war, and the Russians sent in a division.”

Jehanne nodded. She looked at Methos. “You weren’t involved in the Crimea?”

“I had my fill of wars a thousand years ago,” he said. “Give or take a hundred.” He pursed his lips, then leaned back in the chair and examined his fingernails. “One of the best ways to stay out of active combat is to be a doctor.”

“At least it’s an option for men,” Cassandra said, dry and cool.

“I never said it was a fair option. For the most part, women get shafted in war.” His head jerked up, and he held up a finger. “No innuendo intended.”

“You make innuendo?”

“Hang around a little longer and you may find out,” he said. “You know, there’s a poem about the Great War — _the Ulster Division going over the top with ‘Fuck the Pope!’_ They did, too — I heard them.”

“You were in the Great War, though?” Cassandra’s eyebrows lifted and her voice turned caustic. “I see you lived through it. At least they mostly stopped fighting with swords. And it would have been a little difficult to fight a Challenge in the middle of trench warfare.”

He bristled, just slightly. “Yes, it _was_ a bit of a trick. I took a head during the first battle of the Somme.”

Cassandra shook her head, trying to imagine the scene amid the slaughter. “How could you take a head in the middle of that battle and not —”

“As I said, the best way to stay out of battle is to be a doctor. One way and another, I ended up running a field hospital.” He refilled the coffee cups before continuing. “They turned me into an officer_._ It wasn’t my idea at all, but —” An eloquent shrug finished it off.

“But taking a head?” Jehanne interrupted. “With all the things a Quickening affects?”

“Oh, I lit up the sky,” Methos said. “Like the entire hospital was built of Chinese fireworks. I grabbed a dying officer’s saber — oh, come on, Cassandra, surely you don’t think I carried a sword around as a doctor for the British Army!”

She leaned back as well. “No, that would be hard to explain.”

“Shells were exploding all around us, and we kept slipping in the mud, but he was a youngster and mad with war, too damn stubborn to give up. I kept thinking some one would shoot one of us, but the idea of honor in war was still haunting them.” He shrugged. “I tripped on something. A body, I think. He came down at the wrong angle and I wasn’t in the mood to give him a second chance.” He frowned, brooded for a moment, then grimaced before continuing, his tone dripping with venom, “My men cheered and applauded. They thought I’d managed to short out the generators on the Boche side of the wire. They were right about that. I did. Shorted all the electrical lines back twenty miles on the enemy side. They didn’t realize how I’d done it, though. It all seemed like just good theatre to them.” He shrugged. “Rather like Arthur Machen and his ghostly archers or the Angel of Mons. I should have stayed in Martinique, but there were reasons not to.”

“A woman?” Cassandra said, just as sardonically. “Or a man?”

“I never kiss and tell.” He leaned forward and picked up his wine glass. “This,” he said, after a sip, “is better than what they served in the officers’ mess. The enlisted men drank beer. I have to say that outside of France, I prefer beer.”

Jehanne said, “Beer isn’t something one sells. It’s something you make at home and drink with your family — and your friends.”

He looked over in time to catch her looking at him, surprising a smile on her face before she glanced away.

“But you don’t drink beer either,” he said. “As far as I can see.”

Jehanne said, “I drank beer when I was a child. The water’s purer these days, and I never got into the habit of drinking alcohol. Enough wine to be fairly sure the water wouldn’t give me the runs. Wine where the water wasn’t safe.” A sudden warm laugh rippled under her voice, and she said, “My great sin is coffee. Every year or so I swear I’ll give it up, and then…” She shook her head. After a moment, she took the cream pitcher. Only a few drops came out. “I’ll get more. Something else I should probably give up —” While holding the refrigerator door with her elbow, she said, “Elek spent the war with the _Honvédség_.”

Cassandra stopped with her hand halfway to her lips, then set the cup down. A little coffee slopped onto the table, and she sopped it up with a napkin. “The Austro-Hungarian Army?”

“Yes. He was an _Őrnagy_ in a _huszár ezred_.” Jehanne poured cream into her coffee before she sat down. She tucked a loose lock of hair behind her ear. Her face was smooth and bland as unpainted porcelain.

Methos’ eyes flicked back and forth from her to Jehanne, then back again. Cassandra had no clue to his thoughts. _Maybe I never did._ He said, “Major in a regiment of hussars? And you a doctor in a French field hospital. That must have been awkward when you met.”

“We didn’t. Meet then, that is. Meet again then,” she said, clarifying the sentence and confusing it at the same time. “I’d seen him last before the Crimean War broke out.” She shrugged. “He didn’t talk about it much, but then we didn’t talk about our separate ways all that often.”

It left an opening. Cassandra hesitated. Now she could read Methos’ eyes; they blazed with curiosity, the only weakness she’d ever known in him. She hovered on the edge, wanting to know more about the only relationship her friend seldom discussed, but still distrustful of Methos, still not sure how much he should be allowed to know about Jehanne.

The kitchen door squeaked, a screech of rusty metal that made all three wince.

A breath of scent heralded the intruder. Amanda said, “Darling, you have _got_ to oil those hinges.”

“Ah, but then how would I know when someone’s coming?” The thread snapped; the moment passed. Jehanne laughed at Amanda’s pout, then pushed the empty chair towards her. “Come and have breakfast.”

Cassandra glanced sidelong in time to see the annoyance that slid across Methos’ face before vanished. He caught her look; his eyebrows arched in the old haughty expression. Her twinge of fear flared into fury at herself; she lifted her chin and stared back at him. His disdain turned into a smirk. She raised her eyebrows in response — _Hate to have your curiosity unappeased, don’t you? _ — and he dipped his head in grave salute.

Amanda pleaded for more coffee, and Jehanne laughed.

The coffee pot had been emptied a second time when the hall clock bonged eleven o’clock. Jehanne jumped to her feet. “_Merde_! I’m supposed to be in clinic in less than an hour!”

“I’ll clean up,” Cassandra called in her wake, and Jehanne’s ‘_Merci beaucoup’_ echoed down the stairs.

Methos said, “Unless you need help, I’ll get out of your way.”

“No, I’m okay.”

He nodded. “I’m going to check out the abbey’s library.”

She nodded. _At least he won’t be under my feet in the kitchen_.

Amanda said, cheerfully, “I’m going to stick around and get in the way.”

Methos snickered. Cassandra realized she had echoed the laughter only after it rang in her ears.

*** *** ***

With the abbey’s library open to all of his perusal, Methos took a moment to just look over the room. The chairs looked Victorian; he prodded a cushion with his fist. It gave more than horsehair would have, and the brocade was sturdy, but pleasurable under his knuckles. He tested it by sitting, and found it wonderfully comfortable. Almost too comfortable. He was in a mood where, given the chance, he would have gone into hibernation. If the act of dying weren’t so unpleasant, spending the next four thousand years in a sealed pyramid might have been an answer to ennui. Almost by main force, he shoved himself out of the armchair and went to browse the bookshelves.

At least lifting a book would be some exercise.

The bookshelves needed organization. At some point there had been an attempt to at least alphabetize them, but that had petered out somewhere in the Ds, leaving the odd juxtaposition of Dumas _père_, Dumas _fils_, the entire œuvre of Victor-Marie Hugo in matching doeskin covers, and six translations of _Dracula_ — French, German, Hungarian, Vietnamese, Russian, and Arabic. Maybe some other languages and the original English were lurking among the hundreds remaining, but it would take a few years to find out.

Duncan had browsed among some of Joe’s older books, on occasion, but his reading tended to be more focused, less eclectic than Methos, who read anything which caught his eye. Connor had been the same way with books, focused, interested in whatever culture he passed through as far as it affected him. Ramirez — now Ramirez had been a reader as well.

_We think of ourselves as infertile, but we pass on something with the Quickening; we carry something in us and it descends… And what we carry, what we acquire changes us… You never believed that, did you, brother?_

At last he settled down with Balzac’s _Les comédiens sans le savoir_, feeling that realism suited his mood better than Walter Scott’s _Ivanhoe_ or Balzac’s obscure _Séraphîta_, both akimbo to the volume. As the boulevardier asked the provincial innocent he’d rescued, “Will you not now concede, my friend, that Paris is bigger than you are?” a shadow passed across the page. He glanced up and saw Cassandra, her hair damp from washing and hanging in loose auburn curls down her back, turning the pages of the rejected book. He’d left the oversized volume on a pulled-out shelf.

“Why not _Séraphîta_?” Cassandra asked, without looking up.

“It’s a critical edition. I’m not in the mood for philosophical fantasy by Balzac. Especially not analyzed to shreds.”

“What did you choose instead?”

“Well, Balzac, but not fantasy.” He read her a paragraph or two. In the middle of his recital, she crossed to the couch across from his chair and settled into it, curling her legs up under her thighs. He went on with the reading, each word reminding him of the first time he’d read the book and laughed at the characters. An hour later, something like dry sand settled into his throat and he coughed, tried to swallow, then coughed again.

The shadow, scented pleasantly with female musk, bent over him, and Cassandra’s hand in his range of vision, held a glass of water.

He gulped it, coughed, and cleared his throat before handing back the glass. “Thank you. You didn’t have to do that.”

“No, I didn’t.” Her dark eyes glittered. “And there’s no poison in it.”

“I’d have drunk acid at this point,” he said. “But this tasted much better.”

A chuckle lit up her voice. “Even warm?”

“Only cold beer tastes better than water,” he said. He looked up at her, at the sharp profile and the lines of her throat that had attracted him in the beginning. “I saw a Grecian statue I would have sworn had been sculpted from your face, a thousand years ago. I thought then that you might be alive still.”

“But you didn’t check,”

He shrugged. “You were better off without me.”

Cassandra rested her folded arms on her knees, leaning forward. “That might have been after I was at Delphi.”

“Ah. You were one of the Oracles.”

“One of the many over the years, yes. They called me _le Sybil_,” she said, almost as if it were irrelevant.

Methos’ eyes turned darker. “I said to her, ‘Sybil, what do you want?’ and she said ‘I want to die’—” He shook himself, shaking off the memory associated with the quote. “I believe the Oracle I knew was before you held the honor. I was a member of the Areopagus,” he said. “Athens. In a temple at the foot of the hill of Ares.”

“The Council of Elders?” Cassandra frowned. He would have been important indeed to be one of the governing men.

He leaned forward, picked a bookmark up from the side table, and marked his place before putting Balzac to rest. “No, before that. The cult of the Erinyes, ironically. The temple was a place where murderers could find shelter, in order to escape the consequences of their acts.” Methos paused a moment, and his mouth twisted in that nasty sardonic way she’d grown used to over the last few days. “It seemed appropriate, at the time.”

“And had you committed murder recently?”

His mobile face twisted with surprise and amusement. “I wouldn’t have called it murder, but my accuser did. Challenges were rarer then, but not rare enough to escape.”

“Are they more common today?”

And, that, of course, was the one question everyone asked him. As if he somehow knew more than they did for the number of years he’d lived. _As if,_ Methos said to himself, _living five thousand years somehow makes you wiser and less prone to errors_. “Ah,” he said, and clasped his hands behind his head. “Is this the time of the Gathering? You’re the oracle, Cassandra. I don’t possess any great insight into Immortality.”

Her pupils enlarged, swallowing the dark irises with something even blacker. “Once I saw something,” she said. “At Delphi. A woman came to ask for answers — she was Immortal, older than any I’ve ever met.” For a moment, Cassandra saw him. “Even you,” she said, with a flicker of sarcasm. The past surged back across her expression, and then something else, something more than Immortal.

The hair rose on the back of his neck, and he sat frozen. _I have ceased to believe in magic…_

“She wrote it in the language of my childhood. Two words —”

For a moment, he couldn’t translate the simple sentence. _No, not so simple. A question suffix…_ “It ends?”

“You’re missing the time reference in the verb,” she said, “_Herr Professor_.”

“You and Duncan did talk a little, didn’t you?” It had been many years, before his first trip to the New World, that he had been a professor in the old medieval university at Berlin.

She cocked her head to the side and a corner of her mouth twitched. Her eyes still held the vision and the memory, though, and she slid back into the other world. “It ends-when?” Her fingers steepled; Cassandra looked down at them as if they belonged to something not entirely human. “I answered, and I understood my answer, but the priests wrote them down phonetically — they had never heard the words before. They were in no known language.” Then she leaned forward, and her eyes riveted him. “I have never told anyone else.”

“And you think you should tell me?”

“I know I should.” Her voice changed, growing deeper, not at all her voice, not the voice of anything remotely human and yet nothing else, natural and supernatural. And to his disbelief, she spoke in a language no one else knew, no one else had spoken in over five thousand years. “Before you know the end, you must know the beginning. Before there is light, there is dark, and after the light, the dark falls again. The light will rise and become one with the dark. Do not seek to know the hour, for it changes.” Her voice stopped, as abruptly as if her throat had been cut. She sat silent, fingers pressed together, staring past him into a world he could not imagine seeing.

Methos found himself on his feet, and stood paralyzed. _Where can you go — and what are you trying to escape? Your brothers are dead._ “I do **not** believe in oracles,” he said. “I’ve seen too many frauds.”

“Am I a fraud?”

“No.” He rocked his head back and forth, rubbing the back of his neck, searching for the source of the tensed knot. “Gods, if Kronos had even guessed you could…” He felt her shudder without seeing it.

“I had no visions when I was with you and the Horsemen.”

He turned back and frowned at her. “Not even in Bordeaux? They surprised you?”

“Of course they surprised me!” The look she threw at him combined all the most lethal bits of defenestration, castration with a dull knife, and death by a thousand paper cuts. “Do you think I would have opened the door to them if I had seen them coming?”

“**Them**, you think? All three of them blocked your seeing?”

Cassandra stopped and her face shifted into the inhuman perfection of the porcelain statue he remembered. “No. There, it was Kronos. Kronos, when he was in close proximity. I could feel him but I couldn’t affect him with my voice. I couldn’t — shape-shift. I couldn’t use any of the defenses I knew. It’s the same with you. My Voice doesn’t affect you.”

“But I don’t affect your visions?”

“I’ve never had a vision with you nearby. Until now.” She jerked out of her thoughts with another frown, and said, “How odd.”

“What?”

“Jehanne,” escaped from her lips and then she shook her head. “Nothing.”

_Something about Jehanne being unable to use some kind of defenses? What defenses in particular does Jehanne have?_ He wrenched the atmosphere back to something as normal as an Immortal could know. “Shall I read more for you?”

“Yes, please. I’ve never read all of _La __Comédie humaine_.”

“There’s a bloody lot of it to read,” he said. “I’m surprised he wrote it all in one mortal life.”

She snuggled down against the couch, reached across to the pile of folded throws, and pulled a knitted one over her before tucking her hands under her arms.

It was growing colder in the room. One of the chill northern winds sweeping down off the Alps. “I’ll put a few more logs on the fire first,” he said.

“Then start from the beginning?”

“Well, I can start from the beginning of this book. I haven’t found the first volume yet.” He looked over the room once more, then shook his head. “Take a while to find it, too.”

Cassandra glanced around them at the books; some neatly arranged, some stacked haphazardly, some still in trunks or boxes or piled next to the trunks. “Some of this is Jehanne’s. A lot of this, I understand, was left by previous owners who never actually unpacked. Apparently it went through a number of owners after 1796, and has been boarded up since the late sixties.” She paused, then amended the statement. “The late nineteen-sixties.”

“She’s done a lot in a few years.”

“It was a present,” she said. “The friend who bought it and gave it to her had the place cleaned up and given basic maintenance, and then left it for her to — restore as she liked.”

“An expensive toy.”

“She’s not really the meditative type. All the nunneries she’s belonged to were working convents, although I think one or two were cloistered. At least as far as I know.” Cassandra pointed at the book. “I thought you were going to read.”

“Of course,” he said, holding back a smile. He turned to the first page of the octaviodemo. “Léon de Lora, the famous French landscape painter…”

At the beginning of the next story, Amanda slipped in with three bottles of beer, handed the open one to him and a closed one to Cassandra.

Methos paused to drink. “Thank you. I suppose that’s a hint to go on?”

“I never objected to your voice,” Cassandra said dryly.

He inclined his head haughtily but went on reading. He was two-thirds of the way through the book before the door opened a third time.

In the second that he glanced up, he caught exhaustion on Jehanne’s face. He stopped in the middle of the sentence. In the next second, it vanished, and she settled down on a chaise longue in the corner of the library. Amanda and Cassandra looked across her, and Cassandra frowned. Jehanne waved a hand, and Methos resumed his reading.

He knew, from his vantage, that she fell asleep five minutes after she sat down. He knew, as well, that any notice or attempt to alert Amanda or Cassandra on his part likely would wake her. He scanned the next three paragraphs, and continued to recite them from memory as he caught Cassandra’s gaze. A deliberate turn of his head to Jehanne sufficed. As he turned his attention back to Balzac, Cassandra moved silently from the sofa to the chaise. She unfolded one of the multitude of throws scattered throughout the room and laid it over Jehanne, who sighed in her sleep and snuggled into the warmth.

Cassandra stooped and pressed a kiss on Jehanne’s forehead.

She had done that, on occasion, to him, when she had thought him asleep… He read the next sentence twice, realized it after the fact, and put his attention on what he was doing and not what he was thinking.

He finished the book, laid it aside, and swallowed the last of his beer.

Cassandra stretched. Her legs, always one of the delights of watching her, had only become more spectacular over the generations; he could see that without letting her know he watched. She spoke in a normal voice, not a whisper that might have alerted a sleeper to something going on.

“I’m going to go and check out dinner possibilities. I think she ought to sleep.”

Amanda sighed. “Well, I’m no cook, but I’ll come along and peel things. Or whatever.”

“Whatever is probably more like it,” Methos said, and caught the pillow Amanda threw in his direction before it knocked over the lamp. The chair and the library exerted a siren call, but he made the offer anyway. “Do you want me to get in the way?”

“A question that begs for the answer no,” Cassandra said.

Amanda grinned and added, “And so in that case, let us say no now and leave you to read in silence.” She slipped past Cassandra and vanished around the corner.

Cassandra hesitated. She didn’t look at him at all; her eyes were fixed on Jehanne, who slept soundly, without movement or even a shift of breath.

“Cassandra?” Methos had a moment to wonder if he’d spoken her name once since they’d encountered each other here.

Now she looked at him. She seemed to see him now, not the monster in her head.

_The monster I was. Maybe still am, inside._

Her jaw tightened. Then she turned back to Jehanne. In that carefully normal voice, she said, “She’s had nightmares the two nights I’ve been here. I don’t know about the time before that. Amanda might.”

“I’ll keep an eye on her,” he said.

She nodded. In another moment, she also was gone, leaving him alone in the library with his sleeping hostess. He rested his elbows on the chair arms and propped his chin on his folded hands.

Nightmares. Dreams rarely dogged him in the past few centuries. He’d thought of it as a subject for study — did immortality reduce dependence on dreams for sanity? Or were all Immortals over a certain age simply insane? _One problem with that… how do you collect a sufficient sample for analysis?_

Ramirez had been the oldest Immortal Methos had ever known who could accurately date his age. Caspian had been younger than Methos, probably younger than Kronos, and the quintessential sociopath, which might have been why he’d lived so long. Numbers were an unread book to Silas. Kronos, if he knew, had never been forthright about his. Methos didn’t mind being the legendary oldest Immortal, as long as only a very few people could put his face with that name. Nightmares? Well, lately, those thousand regrets he’d mentioned to Duncan…

Jehanne shifted. He glanced up. Something shadowed her face a moment; she lay quite still, as people lost in a nightmare did. Then the shadow lifted, and she rolled over onto her side before covering her head with her arm.

_And indeed, you do have nightmares. What haunts your sleep?_

*** *** ***

_Dawn begins to break over the pines. Jehanne stands in the foyer, watching Elek put on his coat. The excitement rises from him; it is something palpable, something more consuming than fire, something she fears to touch._

_She’s seen him put on armor, seen him put on courtiers’ clothes, and it all blurs into now, into a gentleman’s wool coat and deerskin gloves, none of which covers his scarred face or his willingness to go hunting — something. Something she can’t give him?_

_Some desire which he has been hunting for these several thousand years, a desire she could slake but ultimately not conquer._

_The fear rebounds against her ribs. She hears her heart hammering in her ears, and somewhere in her mind there lies a wall and something is hammering against the wall, struggling to warn her._

_**Warn me of what? St. Michael, tell me what I need to know!** The voices do not come, though. They never come when he is with her, and even calling to them now doesn’t break the spell._

_His gloved hand touches the lock._

_“Elek, don’t go.” The words leap from her throat; she cannot call them back. Weakness, this, and he has never tolerated weakness._

_He half-turns, but does not let go of the latch. “What?” Amusement ripples under his voice. He sounds almost musical in that one phrase._

_“Stay with me. Don’t go.”_

_“Minette…” He isn’t angry. Yet. He is still amused. “This is unexpected, coming from you. I’ll be back sooner than you think.”_

_“I don’t want you to go.” She finds a word on her lips that she has only used to him on the rarest of occurrences. “Please.”_

_His hand leaves the lock. He moves back to her and takes her face between his hands. The black deerskin against her face is supple, warm, expensive, but ultimately a wall, not a connection. “Don’t worry. I’ve never left you without protection, have I?”_

_“I don’t need protection. I need —”_

_His fingers stop her mouth. He shakes his head._

_She jerks her head away from his hands. “If you have ever believed in me, don’t go now. Stay with me one more day.”_

_Warning rises in his face, the nimbus of an approaching fury. “Jehanne, don’t be ridiculous. What difference can one day make?”_

_“I don’t know.” Futile to say any of the clichés such as ‘if you loved me…’ Clichés have never passed between them. Something that banal might make him laugh, but it might also blow this up into a tempest worse than Shakespeare’s. “But since it can’t make any difference, then why not one more day?”_

_Now there is thunder over the mountains, the threat of lightening in his eyes. His voice goes harsh, harsher than the crows fighting over carrion on the road into the village. “Jehanne, you sound like some kind of stupid mortal girl —”_

_“Don’t!” That tone always goads her past her strength, and she brings her hand up a moment, grits her teeth, then lays the hand on his shoulder. “If you won’t stay, you won’t, but don’t leave me with that tone on your lips, Elek.”_

_He does not say ‘sorry’. He does take her hand in his and kiss her palm. Finality rings in her ears when he speaks. “I have to go — I go **because** I believe in you. You’ll be glad when I come back. You’ll see, Jehanne. You’ll see then.” He ends it when he stoops and kisses her, and for those few seconds, she kisses him with all of her soul, all of her breath._

_He unlocks the door, steps out, and says, “Don’t forget to lock up.”_

_“I never do.”_

_The laugh is back in his voice; she is forgiven her nameless fears. “I know. **Viszlát**, Minette.”_

_As his black Mercedes-Benz surges into life and curves to descend the mountainside, she feels an avalanche of foreboding cascade over her, burying her in warning. Something is happening, about to happen, and she has no idea what it will be. No signs, no portents, no omens, no visions. Only a sense as if the world changes in front of her eyes._

_As she locks the door, she sees drops of water fall on the back of her head. Tears, blood-hot, steal her strength. She has never cried for him before. She leans against the solid oak of the great door and weeps._

*** *** ***

Cassandra glanced over her shoulder at the door, debating whether to go back and sneak a glance at the library.

Amanda didn’t look at her, but she spoke as if she meant to be reassuring. “If you’re worried about leaving Jehanne with Methos, don’t,” Amanda said. “It’ll be fine.”

“It? Her or him?”

“She’s safe with him and he’s safe with her.”

A derisive snort escaped. “_He_ would be safe with a viper.”

“And this is Holy Ground and Jehanne doesn’t have a sword in her hand,” Amanda responded. She opened the refrigerator and stared into it as if looking for inspiration.

“And you trust him?”

Amanda paused. She put her hand on a cloth bag. “Mushrooms. Didn’t Jehanne say something about quiche?”

“Yes.” Cassandra stooped and reached past her to pull out a bowl filled with eggs, cream-colored ovals speckled with brown. “What do you think? Is the yellow pitcher or the white pitcher milk?”

“White. Jehanne’s very logical. The yellow is the cream. She says she’s still making butter…”

“Yes, I remember. And she had a grey pitcher for the buttermilk. I guess she’s drunk all of it.”

“Or bought her butter this week from the village, in order to put a little more money into the village dairy, which is Jehanne all over, isn’t it?” Amanda set the mushrooms on the chopping board, and rummaged in the knife drawer. “If it were his head or mine and no other choice, I wouldn’t trust him. This isn’t that kind of situation, is it?”

“No. As you said, this is Holy Ground.” Cassandra hesitated, and the eggs juddered together a second. She rose to her feet. “And this is Jehanne’s home.”

“Yes.” Amanda sliced the mushrooms, pushing them to one side as she finished. “Have you known her long?”

“Relatively speaking, yes.”

“Well, the second time we met she was a nun, but when I first knew her, she was a Swiss mercenary fighting with the Duc de Rohan.”

The egg in Cassandra’s hand slipped, hit the edge of the bowl, and splintering, splattering the counter and her sweater with smears of yolk and albumin. “Damn. Just a minute.” She wiped up the counter and soaked the front of her sweater getting off the egg white. She squeezed out the excess water. “When I met her, she was the Mother Superior of a French hospital in Üsküdar. The Sisters of the Sacred Heart.” _Why did I think she’d stopped being a soldier early in her life? It’s like being an Oracle… the worshippers see what they want to see, hear what they want to hear…_ “She could still handle a rifle or a saber.” She considered it a moment. “There were a couple of incidents — she had to shoot a couple of Russians, and another she stabbed with his own blade.” After saying that, she remembered the coda. “Then knelt and crossed herself and prayed for their souls.” Cassandra cracked this egg without a splatter.

“Ah.” Amanda paused for a second, then pulled another mushroom over and sliced it with excessive care. “That makes sense. She was growing tired of soldiering when I knew her.”

“Did you meet her teacher?”

“Koronel? No. They weren’t together then. I never knew the details, but I got the impression there had been a serious disagreement and she had left him.”

Cassandra nodded, then frowned. “But — he always came back for her. In fact, the first time he came back to find her, it was in a convent he’d paid for her to enter.”

“He just wanted to reclaim her?”

She hesitated. _Amanda’s known Jehanne even longer than I have. Surely Jehanne wouldn’t mind Amanda knowing._ “No. There had been an outbreak of plague in the area. He came back to see if she was — well. That sounds silly, doesn’t it?”

“Not really. Looters…”

“Yes. Convents are not always sacred. I hadn’t thought of that until I started to say it. She was the only one left alive. They buried the bodies, and then they left.”

“She said to me once — that no matter what, he could find her.” Amanda’s hand paused, the knife tip resting against the board. “It is a little odd, isn’t it?”

“Not odd.” It stirred something she remembered hearing from the ancient Immortal at Delphi. “There are some kinds of connections Immortals can form that reach across distances. But they aren’t common. Maybe they had that.”

“What kinds of connections?”

“A mental or an emotional bond.” Cassandra added milk to the eggs and took the whisk from its hook on the wall over the counter. “I was told about it a very long time ago.” She beat the milk into the eggs. The sound of metal on ceramic clinked like water dropping on stone; the ribbons of yellow in the white streamed along the whisk like the stripes woven into the linen robes she wore as the Oracle.

“That’s interesting. I hadn’t run across that before.” Amanda put the knife aside. “How are you at pie crust? Mine always cracks.”

“I can make a fairly good one. Duncan makes a great piecrust. It’s almost embarrassing, to watch how easy he makes it seem.”

“You know MacLeod?” Amanda smacked herself on the side of the head. “Of course you do. You were with him in Bordeaux. Stupid question.”

“I didn’t — well, I should have realized that you knew him. Have you introduced him to Jehanne?”

“No. There was never a reason. Not you, either?”

“No, no reason nor opportunity. I don’t know why. I never felt an urge to introduce them. And then — well, there were other reasons I got in touch with Duncan. Has she moved the tins recently?”

“No. She likes her routine, you know?”

“Don’t we all?” Cassandra looked around for the step stool. _In the corner, of course._ She dragged it out and opened the cupboard she thought she remembered held pie and cake tins. It still did. And it had two ceramic quiche pans, a smaller one in glossy white and a larger, slightly deeper one in a matte blue. “Here we are. You’d think she’d put these in a lower cabinet.”

“I know. Even I have to stand on a chair to get them down.”

Cassandra set the blue dish on the counter. “Flour, salt, fat, and — there. The water from the tap is cold enough. I can’t remember exactly what I was told. It was something about Quickenings, but I can’t…” She shook her head.

“Quickenings?”

“Yes. Something about Quickenings, but…” she tapped her fingers against the counter and shook her head. “No. It’s just at the edge of my memory and I can’t recall it.”

“It’ll come back to you in the middle of the night,” Amanda said. “Always does for me.” She leaned back against the counter, picked up a mushroom, and nibbled on it. “Cheese, you think?”

“What has she got?”

“I remember Brie — that won’t do. I’ll look.” Amanda opened the refrigerator again and began poking around. “So you’ve known Methos longer than any of us.”

“Knew,” Cassandra said. She paused, and looked down at the mound of flour. She stirred it with her index finger. So much lighter than sand, until she cut the fat into it, and then it looked like the sand of her childhood. “Kronos hadn’t changed. Neither had the others. Why should he have changed?”

Amanda found cheese that would grate, and then found the grater. “Jehanne’s going to see the mess we’ve made of her kitchen and she’s going to kill us, you know.”

“No, because we’re going to clean it up after we finish.”

She grimaced. “The worst couple of years I ever spent existing was as a kitchen maid.”

“I can’t say it’s my favorite activity —” Laughter rippled under Cassandra’s word.

“Shopping,” Amanda said dreamily, “I love shopping. Along the galleries at noon, and there’s this marvelous little boutique on the Place Vendome… Shit! Ouch!” She dropped the grater and rubbed her knuckles. “I wish Jehanne would get a food processor. It’s not as if I do this sort of thing often.”

“I’m horribly boring,” Cassandra said, and grinned at her. “I like the woods. I like walking in the woods at dawn. Not quite as bad as Jehanne milking her cow, but no one keeps herself as busy as Jehanne. She’s even busier here now than she was the last time I was here.”

“Busier than when I was here last, too.” Amanda stopped, turned around, and watched Cassandra fit the crust into the quiche dish. “She’s worried about something.”

Cassandra wiped her hand across the back of her forehead. “Me, I suppose. I shouldn’t have come here –”

“I can say the same thing.” Amanda eased the finished pan from under Cassandra’s floury hands. “But we do come here. We come here because she welcomes us. Where would I have taken him otherwise?”

“It’s the only place I could think of — when I started to think again.” Cassandra looked around the kitchen. “We know that if we come here and knock on the door, Jehanne will open it and let us in, and not ask any more explanation than we offer her.”

“With anyone we ask to bring in,” Amanda said.

“Have you brought someone else before, then?”

“Yes. Once.” Amanda grimaced. “It was not a success. He was a student of mine. Kenneth. He preferred Kenny.”

“A problem?”

“He was eight when he had his first death. He’s never really adapted to Immortality. He —” Amanda frowned and looked away. “He hurt one of the cats. He said it was an accident, but Jehanne —” Amanda stopped completely.

Cassandra remembered once in Üsküdar, when one of the patients, bored and frustrated, had caught a rat… “No. She wouldn’t like that. Not at all.”

“I took him away.” Amanda shivered. “I warned him not to come back here.”

“Do you think he will listen?”

The dark hair barely moved with her head-shake. “I don’t know. I hope so. She swore to me that no matter how much she cared for me, if she saw him again off Holy Ground, she would take his head.”

Cassandra tried to imagine Jehanne that angry. She had been furious enough to slap a patient, furious enough to throw the nun who allowed the abuse of the vermin out of the hospital and into a cloister. “But you brought Methos here.”

“I never knew him the way you did.”

She tried to gauge the tone in Amanda’s voice. _Are you willing to risk asking? _“Do you believe me?”

“Does that matter?”

The memory of Jehanne’s voice blotted out everything for a second. _Of course I believe you._ “Yes, it does.”

Amanda dumped the mushrooms in the crust and smoothed them out. After another moment, she strewed the cheese over it. “I believe you.”

“But you never knew him that way.” Cassandra poured the milk mixture over the mushrooms and cheese.

The brunette bob barely shifted when Amanda shook her head. “No. He was my teacher’s lover. Mine, too, for a little while. And then he disappeared. Went underground, or back to books. And then he met Duncan.”

“And after Duncan?”

“Since he met Duncan, he’s woken up.” Amanda seemed about to add something to that. Then, after a second, she bit her lower lip and refrained. She opened the oven door instead and stepped back. “He seems younger, now. Not quite so hidden in his books.”

“Books.” Cassandra flinched as the oven heat hit her in the face. Hot as the desert. “We were nomads, my people. But we carried some clay tablets in a special box, padded to keep them unbroken, as much as possible. Twenty of them — the number of the fingers and toes on a man’s body. They’d been our charge for centuries. I could read them a little, and write in one or two. Some of the languages had been forgotten over the years, Nolwazi told me. No one could read them now. Most of them we passed down by memory. Methos kept those tablets. He knew all the languages on them.”

“All of them?”

“Yes. All. When he was in a good mood, he would read me bits and show me which words meant what. The only time I ever saw him lose his temper with any of the other Horsemen was when Caspian deliberately broke one. Kronos pulled Methos off him before he did more than break Caspian’s arm. In three places. Kronos forbade Caspian to touch any of the things in Methos’ tent again.” Cassandra shut the door, closing the heat away. “And no one disobeyed Kronos.” She straightened, and looked out of the window at the herb garden. “Not even Methos.”

“But he left Kronos.”

Cassandra looked at Amanda: really looked at her, closely, scrutinizing her and reading what she could of Amanda’s soul. “Yes, he did.”

“I was a thief,” Amanda said. “I’m still a thief. I’m a better thief than I was, certainly, but — _Le loup est toujours a loup_.” She shrugged.

“But you care more about people than you did then, don’t you?” _And you excuse yourself with that proverb often, don’t you? But we all do, don’t we — excuse ourselves with ‘it’s a bad habit of mine’ or another ‘what can you expect’?_

“Yes.” Amanda considered it, then nodded. “Yes, that’s true.”

“And you trusted him enough to bring him here. In spite of your unpleasant experience with Kenny.”

“Yes.”

“So you believe people can change?”

The other threw out another French proverb. “_L’affection avengle la raison_[_**[14]**_](http://archiveofourown.org/javascripts/tiny_mce/plugins/paste/pasteword.htm?1274712429#_ftn14). But — I think some can.” Amanda met her eyes, straight and without any guile or charm. “I know Kenny won’t. I know Methos has. But you will have to decide that for yourself.”

“Yes. I will.” Cassandra turned to wash her hands. The water chilled her fingers. “But you’re a woman, and you know what it means, what happened. I would take your assessment over any man’s.”

Amanda wrapped her arms around Cassandra’s shoulders and rested her face against Cassandra’s temple. Even here, in the austerity of the abbey, Amanda’s skin was scented and soft. “I know,” Amanda said. “We know. But they’re only men. Few of them will ever really understand.”

“And for that, you can forgive them.”

“I can. But there are women who can’t, and there’s no shame in not forgiving.”

“Even after three thousand years?”

Amanda’s arms were not as strong as Jehanne’s, but the empathy was the same. “You do what you can.” One more hug, as firm lips kissed Cassandra’s temple, and then Amanda stepped back. She turned to the cupboard which held the dishes, and started to take out plates. She repeated herself as the stoneware clinked against the counter. “We all do what we can. And we all have to live with what we’ve done.”

“And you would protect the ones you care for.”

Amanda paused, then went on with her work. “Yes. And if he still cared for them, Methos would have protected the Horsemen.”

“And he didn’t.”

“He didn’t?” Amanda met her eyes this time.

Cassandra replayed Seacouver to Bordeaux in her mind. Watched Methos’ face in her mind’s-eye. “No. He didn’t.” She hesitated, then said, with more surety, “He gave them up.”

*** *** ***

Jehanne sat up. She had to turn over to do that, and in the middle of sitting up, she felt nothing under her. Air rushed past her for a second. Her back hit something hard. Breath exploded from her lungs. She lay winded a moment, blinking, staring — up? Yes, up — at elongated angels in faded paint instead of cream plaster.

“Are you hurt?” A male voice, strange and out-of-place, intruded on her confusion.

_Not Elek. But — Amanda’s friend. Cassandra’s — better not categorize that. My guest._ The angels were Art Noveau, painted on the ceiling decades before she’d come to the abbey.“I’m in the library,” she said, still blinking and half-caught in dreamland. _Methos — that’s the name._

A narrow, handsome face, all angles, loomed over her. His mobile mouth twitched. “Let me be the first to congratulate you on your grasp of the obvious.”

The floor. She had fallen off the chaise and onto the floor. “And I seem to be on the floor,” she added, pushing herself up onto her elbows. _Smart-assed — another good word for him._

“Even more accurate.” He held out one hand, as long and narrow as his face.

She had a flash, a moment of vision, a moment where she saw through someone else’s eyes, of him reaching a hand down to another woman.

His mouth tightened. He started to pull his hand back, but she caught it before he completely drew away. As he leaned back, she sat up, then bent her knees. A tug, and he drew her to her feet with little or no effort.

_So much strength hidden there. So much — hidden._ “I’m sorry. I was — I seem to be having a lot of nightmares lately.”

“Ah.”

“You, too?”

Fire flashed under his lashes, but when he met her eyes, all the heat had gone. “I dream more lately than I have in the past couple of hundred years. It seems to be something we lose.”

“The need to dream?”

“The need to work out our problems in dreams.”

“Can you?”

The twitch returned, at the corner of his mouth, then expanded into a smile. “Can I what?”

She shook her head. “I mean, is it possible for people to work out their problems in dreams?”

He cocked his head a little to one side, studying her with the air of a man working out an equation. “Psychological theory says we do.” He glanced down at his hand, still holding hers, shook his head, and looked back up in time to catch her gaze again. “Or at least mortals do. Without dreams, mortals develop extreme emotional and mental dysfunction.”

She drew her hand away. “Is that why you became a doctor?” The words slid off her tongue and she heard them only after they took on sound.

Methos pursed his lips, and rocked back on his heels a moment. Then he smiled once more, just a slight smile, charming and yet carrying an edge that made the little hairs along the nape of her neck prickle. “Why do you think I became a doctor?”

She glanced away, shifted her position. A sharp pang shot through her back; she winced and rubbed at it. “It’s none of my business. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have —”

“No.”

The word hit like ice water. Her head jerked around and she found herself caught again. He was still smiling, and he reminded her, suddenly, of the way Elek had smiled when she had first beaten him at chess.

“No,” he said. “Don’t apologize. You’re not a coward.”

“It’s not cowardice to avoid confrontation.”

“It is, in this case. Isn’t it?”

Denial made it halfway up her throat, then slid back down.

Very softly, almost cozening, he said, “Why do you think I became a doctor, Jehanne?”

With an indrawn breath, she realized her back still hurt and the muscles in her shoulders were more knotted than before. _Mother of God, his eyes… he reminds me so much of Elek… But Elek was old, as well. His eyes — their eyes have seen so much… _ “You want to know how things work. If you take something apart, then you see how the pieces fit. If there’s a way to put them back together, and they work, then you know your theory was right.”

He nodded, once, an inclination of the head approving of her — theory. “And why did you become a doctor?”

“To heal people.”

“What if you can’t heal them?”

_Bodies lay all around, some still rigid, others limp. The air stank of death, of vomit and excrement and decay._ She looked back up into the dark ancient eyes and said, “I bury them.”

“And dream about it later.” He folded an arm across his chest and rested his elbow on his fist, then rested his head on the other raised fist. “Are the dreams always nightmares?”

“No,” she said. “Not if I know —” And stopped on the end of it, because the answer seemed so simple and so complete somehow.

He prompted her, his eyes still fixed on hers, holding her in place. He rubbed a thumb along the sharp edge of his jaw. “If you know?”

“If there’s a finish to the — to the situation.”

“To the problem.” His voice corrected the euphemism. “If it’s resolved.”

“Yes.”

“Does it matter if the resolution was good or bad?”

She hesitated, then rubbed the back of her neck. “If it’s bad, I still dream of it.”

“And so —” His voice made it a question.

“And so, Socrates, dreams solve problems.”

“It’s not precisely the Socratic method,” he said. His smile changed; now, there was no predator lurking behind his eyes. “Here,” and he motioned. “Turn around. Hold your hair up off your neck for me.”

Long supple fingers probed her back. Jehanne caught her breath, then wondered if she had reacted to pain, or to touch.

“Yes,” he murmured. “That’s it, there. Hold still for me.” In spite of the request, one hard hand took her by the shoulder, supporting her, and with the heel of his right hand, he began working along her spine where she’d fallen. “It’ll heal quickly anyway, but —”

“Yes.” Her shoulders unknotted, and she let go her hair. When she felt the strands touch her back, she knew they touched his hand as well; she felt his fingers quiver on her shoulder. Then the steady smooth massage stopped, and his scent and the sense of his body near hers faded as he stepped back. “Thank you. That does feel better.”

“Well, I have a thorough knowledge of how the human spine is put together,” he said. His voice sounded light again, amused and distant. “And what happens when you twist as you fall on your back.”

Jehanne swung around and met his eyes. “And how best to get under the skin.”

The distance vanished. The quirk at the corner of his mouth came and went once more. He nodded, again, acknowledging the hit. “And how best to get under the skin.” The clock tolled, and he winced. “Is it really necessary to have a clock that loud?”

“How do you think I can hear it on the second floor?”

“What about an alarm clock?”

She made a face and looked down at her fingernails. She needed to scrub her hands again. “I always forget to wind them.”

“You don’t forget to milk the cow, you remember to set the grandfather clock, but you forget to wind the alarm clock?” He folded his arms. “Let me guess. The second floor isn’t wired for electricity yet.”

“Part of it is. I’m getting around to finishing it.” She counted the strokes in her head. “It’s six! I’d better go start dinner.”

“What’s the rush?”

Jehanne looked at him. He looked — almost angelic. “Oh, sweet Mother of God, don’t tell me Cassandra and Amanda are making dinner!”

A devil’s grin replaced the angel. “Is that such a bad thing?”

“The last time I saw Amanda use a toaster oven, she started a fire.”

“Well, she has Cassandra with her. Surely that’s an improvement.” He took one long stride and was half-a-step in front of her, quickly enough to hold the door for her.

“It is, that.” Jehanne made a face, then added, hastily, “Not that Amanda can’t cook. It’s just that things — happen when Amanda’s in a kitchen.”

“That sounds exactly like Amanda.”

“No, no, you don’t understand. Amanda’s the only woman I ever knew who managed to blow up a stove.” Jehanne paused, then said, “Well, that she did intend to do. It took out the far wall and she was gone before the military police could catch up. But she’s managed to burn out several pans while boiling eggs.”

“Awful.” With great solemnity, Methos said, “I hate the smell of burned eggs on the ceiling.”

*** *** ***

Methos almost bit his lip three times when he tried to keep from laughing during dinner.

The first almost-laugh was when Jehanne skidded to a stop in the kitchen, and he almost knocked her over because he hadn’t expected her to halt. The second was her relieved, “And the kitchen is so clean — I mean, it’s beautiful —”

“As if I’ve never cleaned anything,” Amanda said, with a sniff.

“I never said that,” Jehanne protested. “It’s only — ah, it’s —” she stumbled to a halt.

He managed to keep a straight face. Cassandra was having a worse time than he was. He offered, “We simply think of you as a lily of the field, Amanda. You toil not, neither do you spin.”

Amanda waved both hands in the air. “Heavens, nowadays, they have things called mills, and maids, and if you pay people, they do it for you. And then you send the money downward and everybody benefits.”

He winced. Then he took Amanda’s face between his hands and kissed her forehead. “Amanda, Amanda. Your grasp of economics is appalling. Fascinating, but appalling. Most sane people — well, most of the sane people I know — do not subscribe to the trickle-down theory.”

“You laugh so much more than I remember,” Cassandra said, abruptly.

He stepped back from Amanda, and turned his head, looking at Cassandra under his lashes. _No, Helen couldn’t begin to compare to you._ “Back then there wasn’t much to laugh about, was there?”

“No, there wasn’t.” Cassandra motioned to the table. “Everything’s hot. Let’s sit down, why don’t we?”

The second time he nearly died laughing was when Amanda kept looking sidelong to be sure Jehanne was actually eating the quiche and the fresh bread.

“It’s delicious,” Jehanne said, for the third time. “Absolutely. My mother couldn’t make better. Amanda, will you stop worrying? And the kitchen is perfect. It’s lovely to have someone else cook dinner.”

Methos dropped his head and chewed on his lower lip.

Amanda scowled at him.

He held up both hands. “Didn’t I ask for seconds? I admit I stretch the truth now and then, but I never lie to a cook.”

“That much I can tell you.” This time Cassandra’s dry sarcasm had no bitterness at all, just the recall of a few ruined meals.

“And therefore you can trust me when I tell you this is a delicious meal.”

“Let’s see if you say that after I win at Mah Jongg tonight,” she said, with a lift of her chin.

That was the third laugh, and the one that sent him off into a coughing fit. It seemed he was still not quite over the pneumonia.

*** *** ***

Amanda snickered all the way across the garden.

Methos elbowed her. “Stop it.”

“She did win,” Amanda said. She grabbed onto his arm, leaned forward, and giggled.

“You are drunk.”

She swayed against him, then caught her balance. “She **won**.”

“Not by much.”

“No, Jehanne **almost** beat her.”

He looked up at the sky and shook his head. “All right, all right. Go on, stick it all the way in, you know you’re dying to.”

“And I beat you by fifty-two points,” she finished gleefully.

Methos gave her the one-sided grin and sighed. “Stripped by a triad of ravens. Or two ravens and a magpie.”

“I am an exceptional magpie,” she said. “And I don’t just pick shiny.”

“No, no. You select expensive as well as shiny. How the hell have you managed to stay out of jail all these years?”

Amanda laughed. “I don’t get caught. And isn’t there some phrase for ravens other than a triad?”

“Lucky for you.”

“Luck had nothing to do with it,” she said, sticking her nose in the air and then nearly tripping again.

“Stop that. You’re going to break an ankle.” He pulled her question out of the hat because concentration might keep her from walking into one of the ruts. “A flock of ravens? Or crows?”

“A storytelling of crows,” she said. “A gossip of crows.”

“Ravens, Amanda, not crows.”

“They’re much the same, you know.”

“I suspect ravens would disapprove of that.”

“That would be unkind of them.” She snapped her fingers, or tried to, and continued rambling while she tried to remember how to snap her fingers. “That’s it. An unkindness of ravens.”

Methos smiled, more to himself than to his drunken companion. “You could say that all predators are unkind.”

“Duncan’s kind.”

“MacLeod,” he said, as he wrapped an arm around her waist to hold her upright, “almost defeats the purpose of predation.”

“He’s certainly not a lily of the valley,” she retorted.

“Field, Amanda. A lily of the field.” He remembered Duncan’s patient and thorough renovation of the house in Seacouver. “And one of the things he does best is toil.” He rubbed his nose, thinking of white paint and the slap of a brush. “Though I doubt he spins.”

She started to giggle again. He got the guesthouse door open and walked her through before she slid down onto the floor laughing. Squatting down next to her, he waited until the words spluttered through her giggles made sense.

“Now I see him in this corset and skirt and the cap, spinning away and the thread looks like —  looks like —”

He put a hand over her mouth. “Ah-ah-ah. Let’s try to keep it clean, shall we?”

“Don’t tell me you don’t see it!” She shoved him in the shoulder, knocking him back on his ass, and he sat there for a moment before starting to laugh himself.

“Now who’s drunk?” she demanded.

He rolled over on top of her, pinning her to the floor. “You are.”

Her face changed with the quicksilver mood swings of drunkenness. “Yes. I am. Do you mind?”

“No.” Kronos, oddly enough, had been safest to be around when he was drunk. It softened him, made him expansive, mellow, unexpectedly generous and slipshod. And so, naturally, he had rarely imbibed to excess.

“Then what do you want to do about it?”

Methos assumed a thoughtful expression. Amanda turned mercurial when drunk, even more than usual: open to the whims of a second.

She smacked him on the shoulder.

He laughed, kissed her on the nose, and said, “Take this to the bedroom.” MacLeod, naturally, was a gloomy drunk at the worst of times and a silent drunk at the best. Neither state made him the greatest companion unless you wanted to be either silent or gloomy. “I think my lungs are up to it.”

“Ooh, I like the sound of that.”

*** *** ***

When she turned her head, moonlight lit one side of his face, the other all in shadow, a harlequin or the dark side of the moon. She could tell by his breathing, even but not deep, that he was awake. Relaxed, but awake.

“What is it?” Methos spoke without opening his eyes.

“You can’t expect me to believe you knew I was looking at you!”

His mouth curved; after a second or two he spoke again. “I’m not asking you to believe that. What is it?”

She propped herself up on her elbows and peered at her fingernails in the faint light, trying to decide if that was a chip in the paint or a nick in the nail itself. “Nothing.”

“Amanda.”

“Patience, put-upon, a study in Methos,” she parried. A chip in the polish, not a nick. If she didn’t leave it alone, she’d end up the nail itself.

He rolled over on his side. Now his eyes opened, but with his face all in shadow, she couldn’t divine his mood. He started to rub her back, his fingers working small circles up and down her spine, the fine ridges of his fingertips ruffling the tiny hairs, coaxing them erect on her skin.  “What is it?”

“In Paris, you said —”

His fingers stopped. “I’m not quite clear on Paris. If I were you, I wouldn’t lay a great deal of significance on anything I said.”

“You said Duncan was all right.”

“I did?” Genuine surprise rang in the tone. “I did.” His hand rested flat on her back, just at the rise of her derriere, and then he started rubbing her back again. “I did.”

“Is he?”

“All right?” He let the silence hang without interruption. “He was when I left him.”

She held back a sigh. When Methos felt uncommunicative, she could have pulled screws out of bricks more easily. “When was that?”

“Before I got to Paris? A week maybe.” He ran his hand through his hand and rolled onto his back.

“You don’t remember?”

He interlocked his hands behind his head. “Well, it ended in Bordeaux — last month. I'm not sure of the exact date. I started to come down with this damn infection about a half-day after the car…” He paused, looking confused.  “I don’t remember what went wrong with the car.”

Amanda dropped her head onto her hands and groaned. “Do you at least remember what you did with it?”

“I — uh, left it.” He sounded distinctly uninterested in the subject.

“Any idea where?”

He sighed. “No.”

This time she banged her head on the pillow. “Shit. We’ll be lucky if the _Police Nationale_ isn’t looking for your dead body by now.”

“It wasn’t registered in my name…” He paused, then continued. “And I don't know what name Kronos was using during that time, so I don’t have a way to track that, either.”

“Fingerprints?”

“Amanda, I am not exactly new at this, you know. And neither was he.”

“Well, no, of course not.” She waved with one hand, and promptly fell onto her nose.

He laughed.

“Methos, I am trying to be serious.”

Even with shadows streaking his face, she could see him biting back a grin. Then he assumed a solemn tone. “I am listening.”

“Duncan.”

Curiosity lit his voice, a candle visible in the distance. “MacLeod’s fine.”

“Can you be sure? He took a Dark Quickening once, didn’t he?”

Methos sat up, shivered, and grabbed for the wool robe on the floor next to the bed. “I know there’s central heat in here, but it sure as hell doesn’t feel like it right now.” He shoved his arms into the sleeves and bunched the cloth around him like a mandarin warlord. “Amanda, he was fine.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“Then why did you leave him?”

His face, now visible, froze. Ice crystallized with each syllable as well, when he said, “I said he was fine. I didn’t say **we** were fine.”

_Dangerous ground._ Amanda sat up herself, pulling the sheet up over her breasts. “What kinds of effects could taking a Quickening from an opponent like Kronos do to someone?”

“You planning on trying?”

“Don’t be ridiculous!”

His eyes narrowed. He said, as if speaking to someone a great deal younger than she was, “Amanda, you tried to save MacLeod once before and you know what a disaster that turned out to be. MacLeod can save himself. If there ever were anyone more centered than he is, it’d be — well, Darius.”

“Did Cassandra see him after you left?”

“How would I know?”

Amanda chewed on her lower lip. “Sorry. Not thinking.”

“Oh, you were thinking. If you were a man, I’d say you were thinking with your second head. You know, you could ask Cassandra.” He grabbed her shoulder. “I didn’t mean now — Amanda, Duncan is not going to greet you with open arms for rushing in to check on him.”

“You mean unlike you.”

“Yes. Unlike me. Duncan likes to be the one to ride in on the white horse, remember?”

“I know. I _know_.” Amanda wrapped her arms around her knees and rested the side of her face against them. “Aren’t you the least bit worried?”

“About as much as he’d worry about me if I vanished for a while.”

The bitterness stopped her. She put her hand over his. “Methos, was this all — that bad?”

He said nothing for a moment, and then, very low and deep, he let words out. “It wasn’t good.”

She ran a finger across his knuckles, and dropped her voice into a coaxing note. “Tell me about it.”

“You’ve heard the story.” He let go of her. “And I told you.”

“You told me about Cassandra. Tell me what happened at Bordeaux.”

“Oh, damn it.” He leaned his head back against the padded headboard and sighed. “Amanda —”

She planted her crossed arms on his belly and stared at him.

“Ow! Watch your elbows,” he said.

She offered him her best seraphic smile. “Believe me, I am.”

“All right, let me think. Bordeaux.” He ran both hands through his hair. “You cannot believe how hard it is to get five different people to do what you need them to do when they’re all in different places, and especially when you’re not aware until it’s too late that there’s a sixth person involved in the situation who is unpredictable and throws off your calculations.”

“Cassandra.”

“Yes, Cassandra. I never seriously thought Duncan would allow her to accompany him on his quest. He’s chivalrous, after all, thinks of women as meant to be protected.”

She rolled her eyes. “There is nothing wrong with protecting women.”

“That’s from your point of view, which I grant you, is perfectly reasonable. However, his doing that one unexpected thing screwed up a lot of my calculations. I was counting on being able to keep Cassandra out of the situation and away from my — brothers.”

“In other words, you were trying to protect her.”

Methos stopped. He cleared his throat. “Well, I wouldn’t exactly put it like that. But Cassandra in contact with my brothers — or me — was something I was working to avoid. I didn’t want her head, and I certainly didn’t want any of them taking it.”

Amanda invested each one of her words with a sting. “So you were protecting her.”

He swore. Inventively. Then he pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. “Have it your way.”

“Does she realize that?”

“I don’t think she’d interpret it as you do.”

“You might be wrong. She might appreciate your feeling guilty about the situation.”

He flopped back on the pillow. “I do not feel guilty. It was a different time and a different place, and I was a different man, and none of those things have any reason to make me feel guilty.”

Amanda leaned over and kissed him on the nose. “You know Duncan will get over being pissed at you.”

This time, when he sat up, he nearly hit her in the nose with his forehead. “Are you just jumping on your horse and rambling off in all directions here, or is there a point to this?”

“That Duncan’s having an effect on both of us.”

“I’ll kill myself.” He flopped back on the pillow.

Amanda smacked him in the shoulder again. “Don’t be rude. Part of the reason you’re still here is because you want — what do they call that thing mortal psychiatrists are always trying to give people?”

“Closure?”

“That’s it. Yes. You want closure of some kind or another. Some of it you reached when Duncan took Caspian’s head and then Kronos’. But you still have to deal with Cassandra and what that did to Duncan. And you won’t be satisfied until you do.”

His mouth twisted, wry and irritated at the same time. “Amanda, I believe you less as a psychiatrist than as an economist. But go on — what’s Duncan done for you?”

All of the laughter vanished from her face. “Made me worry about him.”

He rolled over onto his side and propped himself up on an elbow. “Then you should go and find him and relieve your worry.”

“And to do that I should probably talk to Cassandra.”

“Then go wake her up and let me sleep.”

“You don’t want to come along?”

“Revelations are best pursued on a one-to-one basis,” he said. He rolled over on his stomach and buried his face in one pillow before pulling the other on top of his head. She got one more muffled sentence out of him. “Besides, it’s too cold out there to be down on my knees searching for closure.”

*** *** ***

Cassandra jumped, coming out of some dream where she was walking along the endless corridors of Delphi, utterly lost in the mazes of corridors and incense, before a door banged open and showed her a faceless opponent.

Jehanne sat up at once, shoving her hair out of her face and knocking a pillow off the bed. “Come in!”

“Oops… I’m not interrupting anything, am I?” Amanda’s dark hair looked rumpled and uncombed. “Sorry if I —”

“No.” Jehanne started to crawl out of bed, dragging the robe with her.

“No, no, wait. I’m sorry to wake you both.” The flickering firelight surrounded Amanda’s dark hair like a halo. “Cassandra, I wanted to talk to you for a moment. Jehanne, you don’t mind, do you?”

Jehanne, standing barefoot on the stone floor, pulled on the robe anyway. “No, of course not.” She got back onto the bed and dragged the covers over her feet.

Cassandra said, “I’ll come downstairs.”

Jehanne wrapped her arms around her knees. “Put a robe on first. You’ll be warmest in the library. The fire should still have embers.”

“Thank you.” Cassandra fumbled for the other robe lying over the footboard. She had to turn one of the arms right-side out and it took her a moment to get a bow that held and didn’t unravel immediately, but once she managed that and found her slippers, she felt completely awake and out of the surrealism of her dream.

Amanda shut the door once Cassandra came out, but glanced over her shoulder. “She didn’t ask.”

“Did you really think she would?”

After a grimace, the other shook her head. “No. She wouldn’t. But this isn’t anything you can’t tell her later.”

“Let’s go down to the library like she suggested. It’s cold in the hall.”

“Central heating,” said Amanda. “She has got to get in central heating. I swear castles are colder inside than the air outside in winter.”

They hurried down the main staircase and into the library, where Cassandra immediately set to building up the fire from the banked embers. “She lives on so little,” Cassandra said. “But she said something about money —”

“Yes. About having come into a little money. Maybe the lottery. Or maybe some investments.” Amanda smiled. “Not all of us are as canny as Duncan or have had the time to acquire Methos’ stash.”

“I didn’t think to ask her if she knows Duncan.”

Amanda shook her head. “It’s an odd thing. If you know two Immortals and they know you, you somehow assume they know each other, don’t you? And yet… Duncan knows you and I didn’t.”

“But you and I both know Duncan and we both know Methos.” Cassandra examined the web of interactions and smiled herself. “It is odd, isn’t it?”

Amanda moved to stand in front of the fireplace and rub her hands together. She had bundled herself up in a wool robe, covered by a large wool trench coat, probably another relic from one of Jehanne’s closets. “Speaking of Duncan — Duncan lived through Bordeaux, right?”

“He was alive when I left him.”

“What happened?”

Cassandra frowned, turning the memory over as if digging through the trenches in a garden. “It’s a little blurry. It — it was not one of my better moments.”

“Please, Cassandra. I have Methos’ take on it, but I want yours.”

“Do you think something’s happened to Duncan?”

“That’s just it. I don’t know. Do you?”

“No,” Cassandra said, slowly, scowling. “I walked away that night, and I never thought to check.” She sank down on her knees in front of the fireplace, staring into the flames. “We followed them — Methos or Kronos had found Silas — to Caspian, and from there to Bordeaux. Duncan went to meet Methos, and while he was there…” She shuddered, but forced out the words, the minutes, the waiting for something to happen, something — her life — to end. Without reaching her goal.

“So Duncan took two of them — Caspian and Kronos — and Methos took Silas’ head.”

Her musical voice acquired bitterness again. “Screaming that he hadn’t wanted to kill Silas; he’d liked Silas.”

Amanda’s fingers came down on Cassandra’s arm. “Did you speak to Duncan at all before you left?”

“No,” Cassandra said, and shuddered, trying to shake off the memory. “Wait. You mean — what affect did the Quickenings have on him?”

“A sociopath and a — whatever Kronos was.”

“A leader who could bring out the worst in his men,” Cassandra said. “The most destructive.” She started to shiver in spite of the warmth. “I never thought about it. Goddess, I can’t believe I never thought about it. What did Methos say?”

“That Duncan handled the Quickenings better than he expected — that he saw nothing of Caspian or Kronos in him.”

“And there’s nothing much of Silas in Methos that I can see… A shared Quickening,” Cassandra said.

“What about a shared Quickening?”

“When I said I remembered hearing something about Quickenings… That’s what I heard. That there are often strange results from sharing a Quickening, depending on the circumstances.”

“Methos said he didn’t see a change. Duncan was still his trying-to-save-the-world pain-in-the-ass noble self.”

“That sounds like Methos.” Cassandra reached up and rested her hand over Amanda’s. “It’s odd. The intensity of my memories about the Horsemen seems to be fading, and I don’t — I can’t imagine why.”

“Were they always so strong?”

“No. I dreamed about it sometimes. I had pushed it away after I escaped. After Delphi, I almost never thought of it. And then I felt Kronos.”

“You can tell who it is?”

“Not always. Kronos and Methos I could recognize. I can recognize Jehanne.”

“So can I. But there aren’t many others I can. It seems to have to do with sex, whether or not I recognize someone.”

“Sex? Yes, I think you’re right. I never tried to analyze it before. But I had almost forgotten the desert; it had been so long ago.” She tried to estimate the years, but finally shrugged and shook her head. “It all flooded back, as vivid as when it first happened. Now, it’s — it’s not as painful. But Duncan? I don’t know what happened to Duncan after he took Kronos’ head and I walked away. I should have checked on him but…” She wrapped her arms around herself. “There’s always a but in there somewhere, isn’t there?”

“I know. Believe me, I know.” Amanda crouched down next to her, then eased herself all the way down onto the floor. She rested her chin on her clasped hands. “You just grab whatever direction seems further from where you are and you just keep going.”

“And with us, we came here.”

“Yes. You know Duncan. Where do you think he’d go after Bordeaux?”

Cassandra shook her head. “I’m not sure I know him as well as you think I do, Amanda. I — Paris, maybe. Though… Maybe he’d go back to Seacouver—”

“After finding out who Methos had been? After having so many things fall apart there?”

Cassandra leaned forward, picked up the poker, and prodded the logs into a new burst of energy before easing another log onto the embers. “And me the fault of it,” she said.

“No. No, no, no, no, no!” This time Amanda shook her. “Listen to yourself. Duncan’s like a — a terrier. You know that bit about dogs digging up the past —”

“It’s T. S. Eliot. Jehanne and I are always quoting T. S. Eliot at each other. ‘Leave the dog hence that’s friend to men, or with his nails he’ll dig it up again’.” Cassandra sighed. “I was the terrier, though — I dug it up.”

“Eventually even Duncan would have thought to wonder about the parts of the past Methos hadn’t told him,” Amanda said. She swept ashes back into the fire.

Cassandra murmured, as if to herself, “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”

Amanda slipped her hand into Cassandra’s, and together they sat staring at the fire.

Then, in a voice eerily distant, as if speaking from some great height, Cassandra said, “He’s gone home. There’s only place Duncan MacLeod thinks of as home.”

“Scotland.” Amanda exhaled heavily. “Of course you’re right. He’s gone to the Highlands.” In a more pragmatic tone, she added, “You know, it freaks the hell out of me when Jehanne does that. To know two of you is eight times as bad.”

Cassandra’s head jerked around. She laughed. “I’m sure you have own talents, Amanda. You’re just used to yours.”

“Well, it’s fairly rare for me to get caught in a transaction these days,” Amanda said. “And I’ve always had good luck with investments. Financial. People, not so much. But voices running loose in your head — doesn’t that creep you out?” She waggled her fingers. “Just a little?”

Her head dipped; the loose curls hid Cassandra’s face. Her voice didn’t hide the smile in the admission. “Sometimes. More when I was younger than now. Jehanne, now, you would have to ask her.”

“I did, once. She said she was so used to them that she missed them more when they didn’t speak than when they did. That was the one thing that bothered her about Elek.”

“What was that?”

“That she couldn’t hear them when he was with her.”

“You’re right,” Cassandra said, each word drawn out. She tapped the back of Amanda’s hand. “That’s an odd thing in itself.” Then she shook herself and shoved the hair back from her face. “Maybe it had something to do with sex. I never had any influence with anyone who’d been in my bed — male or female.”

“Not a good survival trait.” Amanda folded her arms and frowned. “It’s not as if sharing a bed with someone means you can trust them.”

“No.” Cassandra sighed, and nudged the embers with the poker. “But I’ve almost given up trying to understand why Immortality is the way it is.” She put the poker back in its holder. “Do you want to tell Jehanne now, or in the morning?”

“Do you mind if I go up?”

“No, of course not.” Cassandra smiled at her, and stretched.

“I’ll bet,” Amanda said thoughtfully, “that you look absolutely dynamite in red.”

Cassandra grinned. “I’ve been told so. I prefer blue.”

“Ooh. Purple. A purple with a strong blue in it. Yes. Absolutely perfect.” Amanda tapped a finger against her lower lip. “You’ve got to come and see me in Paris. I have a designer who could put you in the most incredible wardrobe.”

“It’s been a long time since I’ve done something like that.” Cassandra cocked her head to one side, considering it, and her grin widened. “That might be fun.”

“I’ll give you my number tomorrow. Call me. Well, call me in a month or two.” Amanda kissed the side of her face and stood up. “I’ll try not to take too long with Jehanne —”

“I’ll curl up here. It’s warm and I have books. Take your time.” As Amanda left, she caught Cassandra’s last soft words… “Sometimes it takes a long time to say goodbye.”

*** *** ***

Amanda rapped on the bedroom door. She wrapped the woolen robe tighter around her, and wished, not for the first time at the abbey, that she had a fur robe like the one she’d had at Rebecca’s some thousand years ago.

“I’m awake,” Jehanne said. “Come in.”

“Damn, it’s cold in the hallway, Jehanne!”

The fire, rebuilt, chattered to itself. The breath from the hall sent sparks swarming against the fire screen, then up into the chimney, winking out as they vanished. The firelight added some color to Jehanne’s face, and threw shadows across her hand when she patted the bed in invitation.

Amanda crawled under the covers and rolled over to lay an arm across Jehanne’s hips. “You need to get that central heating in.”

“I will. This summer, if no other emergencies hit me.”

She twined a strand of Jehanne’s dark hair around her index finger. “And you need a haircut. And some new clothes. I’ll call you when I’m back in Paris. We’ll get you set up with Philippe, and then I’ll show you some new boutiques I just love.”

“You’re going to find Duncan?”

Amanda shivered. “I hate it when you know things before I do.”

Combing Amanda’s hair with her fingers, Jehanne said, “You get used to it. At least it means I always have company.”

“I can take Methos with me if you’d rather —”

Jehanne sat up again, and shook her head. “He’s not completely well yet. Emotions affect disease, especially in Immortals, and he’s still working the emotions out with the illness. And, besides — he’s interesting. Don’t worry about it.”

“I wouldn’t like to think of your friend Elek showing up and finding a strange man —”

Jehanne spoke so softly that Amanda nearly missed the words. “Elek’s dead.”

“What?”

“He’s dead.”

“When did you — How do you know —” Amanda sat up herself, and caught Jehanne by the shoulders. “How long have you known?”

“They told me, but I didn’t want to believe them. But then I couldn’t feel him anymore, and I knew he was gone…” Jehanne leaned against Amanda as if she could no longer sit upright.

“Well, if you are going to listen to voices in your head that call themselves saints, what do you expect but bad news —”

Jehanne started to laugh. Somewhere in the middle of the laugh, the sound turned harsh, and Amanda held her and rocked her.

“And all this time, you take the rest of us in and never say a word…”

“Oh, don’t,” and Jehanne shoved her away. “Mother of God, Amanda, other people are the only things that keep me getting up in the morning.” She dragged her hands across her eyes, wiping away the tears. “And maybe this is better —”

“Better how?”

“Don’t you wish you didn’t have to worry sometimes?”

Amanda pulled her back into an embrace. “Oh, baby…”

“I’m fine,” Jehanne said, harshly again, like a crow screaming into the darkness outside the firelight. She gulped ragged breaths, then regained control. “When it gets light, you’ll have breakfast, and then you’ll go and find Duncan. Do you have some idea where he is?”

“He’s Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod,” Amanda said, with a shrug. “Where else would he be but in the Highlands at this moment?”

“I see. And will you take the high road or the low road?”

Amanda managed a chuckle. “I’m hoping to avoid the low road, believe me.”

Jehanne finger-combed Amanda’s hair. “So, then — tell me about Duncan.”

“Tell you about Duncan…” Amanda chewed on her lower lip, and then started, almost as if she were dreaming, about Duncan MacLeod and how completely infuriating he could be. “Getting involved in Bordeaux and all that is just exactly the kind of thing he’d do, you know…”

With Jehanne stroking her hair, adding an occasional murmur of understanding, Amanda talked until tears choked her and ran down into the pillow. At some point, between talk, tears, and the warmth of the bed and Jehanne’s body, she fell asleep.

*** *** ***

Amanda had put her gloves on once. She hovered outside the car, with the driver’s door open and the engine running, and took her gloves off, finger by finger, studying Methos’ face intently. “Are you sure you don’t want to come with me?”

“I am sure. ‘She travels fastest who travels alone’, remember?”

“He.”

“He. And he’s probably traveling faster than you are. Or maybe not.  Anyway — Jehanne’s kindly offered me the guesthouse for as long as I wish to stay. And getting over this —” He pursed his lips, then said, “set of hurdles is my preoccupation at the moment.”

She tilted her head to one side, eyeing him, and then dug around in her coat pocket. After several seconds, she came up with a set of keys. “Here.”

He lifted an eyebrow. She pushed them at him. “Take them. Keys to my flat in Paris.”

“Which one?”

“The one you came to in the first place. If you know the other places, I don’t want to hear about it. Methos, don’t be difficult. Take the keys.”

He did.

“There. If you decide you need someplace to stay, you can come there.”

“What makes you think I don’t have a place in Paris?”

“Because you haven’t owned any place any where in the past hundred years, I suspect,” she said.

He laughed, looked down at his feet, clad in brand new boots, courtesy of the village cobbler, and shook his head. “If I’m becoming predictable, I need to do something about it.”

“Right at the moment, you’re the most unpredictable Immortal I know.”

“That,” he drawled, “is a relief.” He leaned down and kissed her, and she wrapped her arms around his shoulders.

_Not so bony, now. And a normal body heat, and none of the twitchiness_. She hugged him harder, relieved, and he laughed a second time as he returned the embrace.

“Don’t break my ribs,” he said. “Do you have a route planned?”

“I thought I’d take the ferry to Dover.”

Methos put a hand over his eyes. “Promise me you will not drive in London.”

“I am a perfectly good driver.”

“Every woman I know tells me that,” he said, “and I don’t know a single one personally who is.”

She punched him in the shoulder. “Chauvinist. London would take too long anyway. I’m going to get a flight into Glasgow and go from there. He’s most likely to take that route.”

“MacLeod is entirely too predictable,” Methos said, with a grimace. “Remind him of that, will you? Stop fussing over me and go and say good-bye to Jehanne, who has been standing in the open doorway for the last ten minutes while you moon over me.”

“I am not mooning,” Amanda said, assuming great dignity, then spoiled dignity and makeup  both when she hurried across the now-dry courtyard and hugged Jehanne. “Oh, now I’ve got lipstick all over you.”

“And it’s not my color. I know. I’ll wash,” Jehanne said, and smiled at her. “I will watch over him, Amanda. He will be safe here.”

“If he should leave —”

“Neither you nor I can control what happens after they leave. I will do my best, Amanda, I promise, but I cannot work miracles.” She tucked a lock of hair behind Amanda’s ear, and whispered, “Don’t tell anyone I said that.”

Amanda chuckled. “Come see me in Paris. When it’s warm. This summer. Promise. Cassandra’s going to call and maybe we can work it out to be at the same time.” She held onto Jehanne’s hand a moment. “It’ll be fun, Jehanne. You need a little fun.”

“Fun is not what I’ve had recently, no.” Jehanne kissed her, gently, chastely for the moment. “I promise I will come to see you. Drive carefully.”

She went back to the car, kissed Methos one more time, then took a deep breath, put on her gloves, and got into the car. She backed it around, then waved one last time before heading down the mountain.

Twice on the way to the main road, Amanda nearly turned around and went back. Finally, she pushed a cassette tape of Dalida into the player, and focused on the road. The only way to go now was forward.

*** *** ***

The next couple of days, without Amanda to pop in and out of rooms unexpectedly, passed almost without notice, moving from dawn to night in a routine that involved Jehanne going back and forth to the village, companionable dinners between the three of them where the past made surprising appearances in conversation, and segueing to an evening of reading in the abbey library. Jehanne enlivened the reading by lengthening several pairs of trousers to reach past Methos’ ankles.

Ninon LeChinois had come in that night for a follow-up on Marie-Jeannette’s ear infection, and Jehanne had left them alone while she worked in the abbey clinic room.

Cassandra had read the same page in _Les Misérables_ five times, and found herself still stuck in trying to understand the sewers of Paris in 1832, and having no more luck than Valjean himself.

“Well, this description adds one more to the list of things I don’t understand,” Cassandra said.

“You’re far ahead of me, then.” Methos glanced up from an illuminated copy of Aristotle’s _Ethica Nicomachea_. His eyes glittered a moment, but the familiar mockery no longer made her wince. “There are still millions of things I don’t understand.”

“Millions?”

“Well, thousands, maybe. Hundreds, certainly.” He put a bookmark into his place and laid the book on the table. “What’s this one thing, then? Not Paris sewers, really?”

“No.” She drew in a breath, thought over the words, then said, slowly, testing each word before giving it voice. “Why out of all the tribes in the desert, you picked us. We weren’t any richer, I think — in fact, I’m fairly sure we were poorer than many. What was it about us?”

He leaned forward in the chair, and interlocked his fingers. His eyes held hers as he had held her at the first — as his gaze could still hold her, make her pause even for a mere second in the middle of rage. He could — and had — lied with a straight innocent face, but something in his voice said there were no lies hidden in these words.

“It wasn’t you,” Methos said. “It wasn’t that out of all the tribes in that wilderness we chose you. You were the first we stumbled onto, and we needed supplies. And diversion. Hunting and raiding was all that really kept us together. Stumbling into your tribesman was — bad joss, or the evil eye, or whatever you want to call it. If we’d veered a foot or two to the left or right at the beginning of our hunt, we would have come nowhere near you. It was — chance.” His eyes were kind, resting on her face. “Not everything has to have a meaning.”

“Maybe not. But what if it were meant?”

“Meant? By whom?”

Cassandra frowned, trying to articulate the thought. “God — or the Goddess. Fate. Fortuna, as you said. Or Destiny. Whatever you want to call him — or her. Or it.”

Now he brought one slipper-shod foot up and rested his heel on the hassock. “If you put it like that, then isn’t it all the same thing? You said it earlier yourself. What kind of god would decree such a thing for his acolytes, if he or she or it were a god?”

A soft alto interrupted. “You cannot conceive, nor can I, nor anyone, the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God.”

Cassandra looked up, and Methos twisted to look over the back of the couch. “What?” They might have said the single word in stereo.

Jehanne came all the way into the library, and dropped in a cat-like curl on the far end of the couch, apart from Cassandra and diagonally from Methos. “The author is Greene, I think. But what he says… Not ‘fathom’, which in English I understand means both the depths of the sea and the depths of comprehension, hauled up like mud from the bottom of a well. ‘Conceive’, which means both bringing forth and imagining.”

“Imagine what mercy?”

Brows drawn together, Jehanne chewed on her lower lip a moment. She shook her head. “I don’t know, exactly. Maybe…” she cocked her head, then twisted the gold ring on her index finger. The names JHESUS and MARIA circled, repeating themselves again and again. “Maybe the mercy of knowing cruelty so well that you cannot conceive of being cruel yourself. Or maybe the mercy of knowing cruelty so well that when at last you recognize it despite the mask it wears, it so horrifies you, you run from it.”

With a twisted lip and memory red in his eyes, Methos said, “I’m still capable of cruelty.”

“Of course you are. So, I think, am I.” She stretched out a hand across the space, and Cassandra took it. “I do not think Cassandra is.” Her mouth also twisted, and she said, “And I envy you that.”

“There is no need to envy me anything, Jhenette.” Cassandra kissed Jehanne’s palm. “All the good that I am I have learned from others.”

“That I do not believe.” Jehanne returned the kiss, then sat down on the arm of the couch. “Have you both eaten? I’m thinking about lunch.”

Methos smiled; reminding Cassandra of an earlier conversation.

“Actually,” Cassandra said, mimicking his lazy delivery, “Methos decided to prove he could cook.”

“Do I want to know what we’re having?” Jehanne’s eyes sparkled, but she held in a smile.

“Comfort food,” Methos said. “Onion soup, bread, and cheese. Wine for those of us who drink it and coffee for those who don’t or who want both.”

“That sounds wonderful.”

Cassandra managed something that sounded agreeable. The words kept circling inside her head: _the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God. It wasn’t you. It wasn’t that we chose you._

*** *** ***

Jehanne rolled over on her side and smoothed Cassandra’s hair. “Cassandra. Cassie, _ma petite_, wake up, you’re dreaming.”

Cassandra jerked awake, her mouth dry and her heart trying to hammer its way out through her breast. “Goddess. Jehanne?”

Hands fumbled in the dark. Jehanne caught them between hers. “It’s all right. It’s nothing but a dream. Cassandra, can you hear me?”

“Yes. Yes, now I — Yes.” Cassandra lay back on the bed, then rolled over and pressed her head against Jehanne’s shoulder.

“What was it?”

“Some sort of tomb, I think.” She gulped for air. “I think — in the dream, I was screaming.”

“Here. Let me get you a glass of water. Let me up a moment, _chouchou_.” Jehanne reached across and found the pitcher and a tumbler on the cabinet next to the bed. She poured the water, and held it until Cassandra’s fingers stopped shaking and she could swallow the water without choking.

“Erishkagal,” Cassandra whispered. “Inanna went to the underworld to beg for her husband back from her sister, and her own sister slew her, left her in the dark, under a tomb, nothing but bones.”

“You aren’t in the underworld, Cassandra.”

“Enheduanna,” Cassandra said.

Jehanne pulled the other woman into her arms. “That was your name once, yes. Some one gave you another name, you told me. And then you took the name Cassandra.”

“Methos named me. I left the name with him.” Cassandra rested her head against Jehanne’s breast. “It seems so long ago now. Do you believe in fate, Jhenette?”

“I believe in God. I don’t understand him, but I believe in him. I’ve never been sure about fate — I feel that there is a purpose to things, but whether it is true or it makes living bearable to me, I can not tell you. Do you believe in fate?”

“I ran across Kronos in Edinburgh,” Cassandra said, her voice surrounded by shadows. “I can only put a face to a few recognitions. I know MacLeod, and I knew this one. I knew this one, but I didn’t know Methos until I saw his face. But I knew Kronos, and I can’t tell you why I should have known that particular set of senses: as if I smelt amber burning and heard a fire roaring out of control at the same time. I needed to get close enough to Challenge him, but he was always one bus or one plane ahead of me. And then, in a vision, I saw that he was coming to Seacouver. I didn’t know why. But then there he was, and he had been tracking Methos.” She reached up and curled her arm around Jehanne’s head. “Then I realize that I need somewhere to rest, some one who will welcome me, and I come here. And here he is. Is that also the mercy of your God, or just an appalling strangeness?”

Jehanne did not answer for several minutes. She continued to stroke Cassandra’s hair, while humming some cradle song she remembered her own mother using to sooth her.  “I believe,” she said, “that it is possible to find patterns in events. They may not be there; they may be patterns we find because we need them. But I believe that there is pattern and purpose. It’s only faith, but then, faith is something we cannot prove, or we would not need to leap to accept it.”

“I have to think,” Cassandra said. “I don’t know how to get myself into a state where I can think.”

Jehanne turned her head to kiss the soft skin covering the tensed arm muscles. “I have always found work to be the best provider. When you clean, when you garden, when you make bread, your body is occupied and your mind finds its own path.”

“You said that to me in Üsküdar.”

“I have a bad habit of repeating myself.”

“Not so bad.” Cassandra sighed and rolled over onto her back, staring at the patterns firelight made on the ceiling. “Can you find me work?”

“Here?” Laughter danced in Jehanne’s voice like the flames flickering. “Here I have no end of work to find for you.”

*** *** ***

Cassandra had finished scrubbing the kitchen. Things gleamed, and in spite of the coolness of the stone, she wiped sweat from her face. Satisfied, she glanced up at the clock, and decided to ask for a new task.

But hunting Jehanne when she was in a full cleaning frenzy was like tracking salmon. She found traces of her in the scent of cleaner and the drying spots on floors. Occasionally, she heard a sound of feet echoing in the distance. She stopped on the third floor and went back down to the second and the East Wing, and began a methodical canvass room by room.

Cassandra poked her head into the room where Methos had spent his first few nights in the abbey, but saw only a freshly-made bed. From behind her, she heard a sneeze. She turned and saw dust swirling out of that room into the early light coursing down the hall.

The room contained four trunks, several stacks of boxes, and Jehanne halfway into a trunk, dragging objects out and dusting them off.

“More unknown treasures left by strangers?”

“Unknown treasures of mine, I fear. I’ve stuffed things into so many trunks over the years… And so much of it is just offal I couldn’t bear to discard.” Jehanne twisted and picked up a bundle of leather journals, banged them together, then opened one. “My notes from my time learning Hermetic medicine in Paris.” She smiled. “That was the early seventeenth century, though. I did enjoy Mayerne.  It was all so secret and underground. We all had code names — mine was Neptis.” She set them down. “More modern, here, you see,” and lifted a hardbound copy of  _Harrison : Principes de Médecine Interne_ from another pile. She removed several rectangular objects, each swathed in padding, and unwrapped one. “Ah. Poussin. He gave it to me because I fed him a few nights. The Death of Hannibal, he called it. It’s early, but I liked it.” Another swaddled bundle revealed a small black journal. She opened it, coughed at the dust, and peered at the crabbed writing. “Oh. This was one of François’ notebooks.” She handed it over to Cassandra.

It took some struggle to decrypt the scribbles. After the first few poems, Cassandra looked up at Jehanne. “He — hmm — believed in the language of the common people, didn’t he?”

“François and the common touch, yes.” Jehanne shook her head. “Always _épater le bourgeois_.”

Cassandra plucked a oval swaddled in muslin and carefully tied cords from the pile next to the trunk. “What’s this? Another picture?”

Jehanne glanced over, then said, “The only portrait I have of Elek. He wanted a miniature of me by Augustin — that was after the Revolution — and I wouldn’t have one done unless he agreed to one as well.”

“You can recognize it before I've opened it?” Cassandra picked at the knots. There were four, simple square knots, but the fine cord took some effort.

“I remember those knots. I had help packing, and the servant was very proud of his knots. The frame, now, was cast especially for the miniature. The artist painted the cast with enamels. They’re worn, but you can still see traces if you look.”

Cassandra turned the hand-sized frame face-up. She stared down at it, at the exquisite velvety colors against the metal. Almost Titian. Almost alive.

Metal rang against stone when the frame dropped from her nerveless fingers. She looked at her palm, expecting to see it scorched. Hallucinations. She was hallucinating now.

Jehanne twisted, balanced on one knee, and looked up at her. “Cassandra? What’s wrong?”

“Kronos.” Her hands shook. She stared down at her trembling fingers, then interlocked them to try and hold them still. Cassandra’s throat ached; her gut heaved and something thin, bitter, and slick with bile choked her. “That’s Kronos.”

“No, I told you. That’s Elek —”

“The scar. It ran —” she gestured, mimicking the bisecting gash from scalp to chin. “Are you trying to tell me that another man, thousands of years later, had the same scar? Kronos had another, on his belly.” The memory, for the moment, was closer than the woman standing two feet from her. “In the shape of a snake. Did he have that scar too?” The room seemed to shrink in her gaze, the edges of her vision bleeding red, heat building up behind her eyes.

Jehanne’s knees folded. She sank down onto her knees, then sat back against the chest. She blinked, shook her head, and said, “No. No, please.”

“Your Elek was Kronos. Gods. Oh, gods.”

Jehanne closed her eyes, leaning her head back onto the closed trunk. “_Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum. Benedicta tu in mulieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Iesus. Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc, et in _—”

Clearer than the words of the prayer, Cassandra remembered Jehanne, saying to them, ‘You cannot conceive, nor can I, or anyone, the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God.’ And then, saying, ‘I do not think that Cassandra is capable of cruelty.’

Cruelty. _To blame Jehanne…  **Ce qui est fait est fait**; she said it herself._

She sat down beside her friend. Her lover. Her confidant. “Jehanne,” she said again, because no other words could make it out past the knot in her throat. She coughed. “Jhenette, how did you meet? What happened?”

“My own people betrayed me to the _goddamns_. An English priest excommunicated me. And then the English burned me. I remember the flames. I remember —” Jehanne shuddered.

She turned to put her back against the trunk, and pulled Jehanne against her. The familiar scent of lavender and rosemary sweetened the dusty air. She stroked Jehanne’s fine, silky dark hair. “The first death, I suppose, we don't forget.”

 “None of the men who had followed me were there when I was put on trial. Not the king himself, and not his men. A farce of a trial. And there was light I couldn’t close my eyes against, and heat, and the smell of my own flesh burning, and then — nothing. Silence. All at once, I choked on something wet. Something foul-tasting and worse-smelling.” Her pupils widened as she fell further and further into memory. “Later he told me that they’d flung my remains into the river so there would be no relics for anyone to carry away. I broke the surface, tasted air, and then I dragged myself onto — onto the bank of the river. Stony, and covered in filth, and slimy against my skin. My body ached. I remember getting to my feet, and realizing that I was naked, and alive, and then — then I saw him.”

“Kronos came after you?”

Jehanne jerked her head sharply in a no. “Elek Koronel. I knew him as Elek Koronel. He was one of my generals. He was my fight master. He taught me to use a sword. He cut an arrow out of my thigh, after a battle. And there he sat, cross-legged on the stones, as if he’d been waiting for me to drag myself out of the Seine.” She shivered. “I spoke to him. I said —” Her face twisted into a frown, before she nodded once, and spoke the rest of it in a whisper. “_Qui suis-je? Quel suis-je? Pourquoi Dieu m’a-t-il abandonné_[_**[15]**_](http://archiveofourown.org/javascripts/tiny_mce/plugins/paste/pasteword.htm?1274712429#_ftn15)_?_”

Cassandra kissed the side of Jehanne’s face, and tasted tears. “Why in the world should you think God had abandoned you?”

“I couldn’t hear my voices,” Jehanne said. She pushed her hair back out of her face. Her eyes were as dull as her voice. “When I came out of the river, I couldn’t hear the saints. I couldn’t hear God. Elek was waiting for me, sitting on a camp seat, in the shadows, and I stood there in the dark, cold and dripping and stinking of every filthy thing ever dumped in that river. And Elek held out a hand to me. He said that God hadn’t abandoned me, that God had sent him —”

“That God had sent him.” Cassandra shook her head. “It would be like him to assume godhood — but you believed him?”

“What was I to believe? It wasn’t heaven. It wasn’t, in spite of the fire, hell. Where was I, if not in heaven or in hell?” Jehanne pressed her clenched fists against her temples. “You have the Voice, you were a prophet — why couldn’t you stop him three thousand years ago?”

“I couldn’t. I never could use it on them. I could never use it on anyone who — with whom I had been intimate. With or without my consent.” Cassandra shivered:  Kronos grinning down at her, Methos’ hand on her thigh. “Did he hurt you?”

Jehanne’s eyes shut. She shook her head. “I always thought I would know what face evil wore, Cassandra. I thought I would know. Elek never worshipped me the way some did. He watched, and he listened, and when the others left, he came back for me.”

“He would have sensed that you were one of us. He must have been waiting — “ But Kronos could be surprisingly patient. He had waited for years before he forced Methos to make a choice.

“Waiting. Yes, that was it. He was always in the background, as if waiting for something. But there, at the river, he stood and held a hand out to me. His bare hand, not even shrinking from the dirt on me. I remember he seemed to swallow up the dark. And he said, _God has not abandoned you. He sent me to teach you_.”

Now Cassandra shuddered. “Teach you what?”

“How to be Immortal.” Jehanne exhaled, and leaned forward, resting her forehead on her knees. “I suppose at that moment, anyone could have killed me, or taken me, or — He put his cloak around me. He picked me up, and carried me across the ground to where he had a horse tied to a post. And he became my teacher.”

“In everything?”

“It was two years before I gave myself to him. He never forced himself on me. He never…” Jehanne stopped, then started again. “He was not a good man. I knew that, God forgive me, but I never expected him to be a good man. Good men may become good soldiers, but a good soldier is not necessarily a good man. I cannot reconcile the man I knew with your Kronos, Cassandra!” Jehanne wound her fingers into her hair. “I saw him show cruelty to others, and I stopped it, when I saw it. He did me no ill, except …”

“Except?”

“When I was with him, my voices left me. I couldn’t hear them, or they didn’t come to me. I have never known which.”

“Maybe you should have taken that for a warning.” Cassandra clenched her teeth on further words. Accusing Jehanne of naïveté? _That same naïveté that led her to befriend you?_ She could remember Kronos pulling Caspian away from her in Bordeaux, with a few dismissive words: ‘_She belongs to Methos. He gets to decide.’_ She herself had never meant anything to Kronos, except one thing that he thought Methos might prefer too much.

“I saw that he could be cruel… If I had taken it as a warning, maybe Bordeaux would not have happened.”

“Bordeaux had nothing to do with you.”

“He died in Bordeaux —”

“Yes,” Cassandra said. _It does have something to do with her, doesn’t it?_ “Yes. He died in Bordeaux — and you were in love with him.”

Jehanne shook her head. “I loved him, yes, but — I have always been in love with God. When he said to me that God had sent him to teach me, as God had sent the saints…” Her voice cracked with anguish, her heart bleeding out between the words. “I believed him. Is Kronos all he ever was? Who was the man I knew?”

Cassandra reached across her and picked up the miniature. The eyes and face were as remote as a desert village millennia in her past. _ Dead men do bite._ “Ask Methos.”

“Why not you?”

She cupped the younger woman’s face in her hands, turned Jehanne’s ashen face up to hers. “I only know the man who raped me, who slew my people, who died at Bordeaux. Methos knew him longer. Hear the whole of it. Talk to Methos, Jehanne.”

*** *** ***

Methos surveyed the rows of books in the guesthouse library. He’d skimmed several volumes over the last few days and found a number of books to interest him. A set of essays on Paracelsus tempted him more than once, but he didn’t feel up to the effort. Comparing the collection with the larger selection in the abbey, He decided that Jehanne’s assessment was typically deprecating. Even though the number was less, it had been assembled over a number of years, from many sources. Today he bent down and found, on a shelf at knee-height, a set of eight onionskin octavos bound in rose-dyed calfskin.

The collected works of Christine de Pizan.

A name plate, with worn gold-leaf embellishments indicated the set had been created and bound for Alaine-Yvette desMarins in 1835. A gift? A set to prove the owner was educated and wealthy?

The affectation made no difference in the quality of the writing, and certainly the conceit of having all the volumes bound in calfskin dyed rose was amusing, in a _petit-bourgeoise_ sort of way. And the volumes fit into one hand, making reading easy. He backed into his favorite chair, slumped down, and rested one leg over the padded leather arm, thumbing through the pages.

_As it belongs to sovereign princes to undertake and carry on wars and battles, we must now consider the causes by which, according to lawful means, they may be undertaken and pursued. In this matter one is well advised, it seems to me, to remember that five grounds are commonly held to be the basis of wars, three of which rest on law and the remaining two on will. The first lawful ground upon which wars may be undertaken or pursued is to sustain law and justice; the second is to counteract evildoers who befoul, injure, and oppress the land and the people; and the third is to recover lands, lordships, or other things stolen or usurped for unjust cause by others who are under the jurisdiction of the prince, the country, or its subjects. As for the two of will, one is because of revenge for any loss or damage incurred; the other to conquer and take over foreign lands or lordships._

_Ah, Christine, Christine. To think that any king would care if his causes were virtuous…_

Something thudded against the library door. He thought for a second he’d imagined it. Then the sound repeated: a louder and more insistent knock. He lay the book on his thigh. “Come in.”

The door, opening, produced his hostess.

“Jehanne?” He started to get to his feet. The book slid; he grabbed it before it hit the floor.

“Don’t get up,” she said. “Please.”

He sat again, but put Pizan on the table next to the chair and both feet on the floor. She glanced around, then grabbed the nearest hassock by one of its handles and dragged it across, in front of his chair. She pulled something out of her trousers’ pocket, concealing it between her hands.

When she spoke, her voice trembled, dropping into lower ranges and almost vanishing in some syllables.

He leaned forward, interlacing his fingers, straining to hear her words. “Jehanne, you’ll have to speak louder, I’m sorry.”

“When I first…” That was almost a shout. Jehanne stopped, cleared her throat, then started again at a reasonable volume. “After I died the first time, my mentor was Elek Koronel. He was one of my generals. My fight master. He taught me how to use a sword.”

“If you’re looking for absolution, I’m not a priest, Jehanne.”

She shook her head.

Words caught up with his thoughts. “Wait. One of your generals?”

Her face paled as she met his eyes. She ignored his question. “I only ever had one picture of him, you see. I’d even forgotten I’d put it in the trunk.” She spread her hands out to him, and he glanced down at them.

At the bit of enameled artwork in her palms: he stared at a face and a scar he knew better than his own reflection. _Except that for centuries he **was** my reflection._ “When was this painted?”

“Seventeen seventy-four, I think,” she said. “We had been back together for about fifty years. I was beginning to feel an urge to go back to God — back into solitude — again, and he wanted something to remind him, he said…”

“One of your generals? When? Who were you fighting for?”

She shrugged. “I fought for France. I fought as my voices told me to fight —”

He repeated the question once more, clenching his fists. “One of your generals?”

“The people — my generals, they called me _la Pucelle_. The king betrayed me,” she said. “The English burned me at Rouen in fourteen thirty-one. When I — came into Immortality, he was waiting for me.”

“_You_ were the Maid of Orléans,” he said. “You were Joan of Arc.”

One nod answered. Her eyes asked questions, but he brushed past them.

“_Kronos_ was one of your generals? _Kronos_ taught you to use a sword?”

“I knew a man named Elek Koronel. Is this the man you called —”

He took the miniature from her. There were older scars, old marks that only Kronos would have had — Methos asked her about each one in turn. Her face turned as grey as her eyes as she admitted knowing each distinguishing trait.

“He called himself Kronos,” he said. “I never knew him by another name.”

“I loved him,” she said. “What kind of man did I love?”

“That’s a hell of a question to ask me!” Methos jerked himself out of the chair, almost knocking her over. He reached for her shoulder, then pulled his hand back and turned away from her. The room was too small, suddenly; the books crowded him, smelling of the past, old leather and paper and dust still younger than desert sand. The wall and the window stopped him. Snowdrops, the first of flowers, lined the path leading to the glassed-in herb garden.  He looked back, not directly at her, dissecting the pattern of the worn carpet covering the stone floor. “Did he…”

“Yes.”

“Did he force you?”

A shake of her head responded before she spoke. “No. He said he did not know how to be gentle — but he never forced me.”

“Did he —” An absurd question. A question the Kronos he had known would have answered with laughter. “Did he love you?”

“Yes.”

Methos rounded on her. “How could you know that? He said it? How many men have told you they loved you?” _He did not know how to be gentle…_

Color flooded then faded in her face. “Not that many. And — Love was not a word he spoke. I don’t — I don’t remember if he ever said _‘je t’aime’ _to me.” She wrapped her arms around her knees, but didn’t shrink from his stare. “When — I wanted to go back to serve God, the first time… I wanted to stop working for men who paid us to kill. We were in Navarre, fighting with General Asparros, and we’d been defeated. Asparros was an idiot,” she said, suddenly and passionately. “He wouldn’t take my advice. That’s why we lost.”

“You were talking about Kronos. Elek,” he said, using a name that meant nothing to him.

“Yes. Elek found me a convent. The church isn’t God, you know — for enough money, they would take any woman as a nun, then. Elek told them I was his sister, that our parents had died. He gave them a dowry to accept me as a postulant. It happened more than once between us. He would come back for me, or he would somehow find me, later. I never knew where he had been, or what he had done. He never said, and I never asked.”

His eyes burned. Methos scrubbed at them with the heels of his hands. “I never knew a man like that,” he said. “The man I knew could not have done that.”

“Could not have loved me?”

“I don’t know if he could love. I don’t know if he knew how. I know he could not have let you go if he thought he loved you. Couldn’t have let you live if you left him.” He came back to the chair, dropped into it, leaned forward, and took both of her hands in his, scrutinizing her face. “In Bordeaux, he was exactly as I remembered him. The leader of the Horsemen. He never told you about us? About the Horsemen? You’d never heard of the Horsemen until Cassandra — and I — came here?”

A shake of the head. No dissembling; no lie in her face. He searched for something that would explain how she could have belonged to Kronos and still remained the Jehanne d’Arc of all the French heroes and the English villains. “What _did_ he tell you about himself?” Was that it? That somehow, she had been with Kronos but never belonged to him?

Jehanne shook her head. “Bits and pieces of things. I knew he was old. He never said how old; he said once that he had no idea how old he was. He talked, sometimes, about a sword he had carried once, a bronze sword he’d won from an opponent.”

“That was our master.” A memory lifted out of the darkness: one that still, after nearly four thousand years, could make the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. “I don’t remember — yes, I do. Ziusudra. That was his name. Kronos took his head as well as his sword, after goading him into a fight.”

“He told me he ceased to carry that sword when steel became available. Steel beat bronze in combat.”

Methos nodded. “And he never let sentiment win out over tactics.” He snorted, and amplified the thought. “Usually my tactics.”

“Tactics…” she said. “Yes. He said Hannibal started out well but failed in the end on tactics.”

“That’s an interesting take on it.” Kronos had always realized the value of tactics above everything else. Even overwhelming advantage in numbers wouldn’t compensate for poor tactics, and Kronos had no overweening impression of his own tactical abilities, so he left that to other hands. “So he fought alongside Hannibal?”

“Throughout all of his reign. At the end, he brought him poison when Hannibal decided he wouldn’t risk being captured.” She cocked her head to the side, and memories ignited her grey eyes. “Elek said once the only city that ever truly mattered to him was Carthage. When Carthage died, he gave up on cities.”

There’d been no time for discussion of the past at Bordeaux. Bordeaux had been about turning the future into the past. Methos eased back in the chair. “What else did he tell you?”

“It’s hard to — to think of all the things we did talk about, when we talked. He didn’t mention the past often.” Jehanne stared down at her clasped hands, and then her mouth softened. “He told  me the only good things about the Romans were their armies and their sanitation. He said not even modern Swedish saunas matched a Roman bath.” She propped her chin on her hands. “He said that — when he came back, this time, he’d get someone to design a proper bath for the abbey and have it built.”

“He planned to come back.”

“Yes. Oh, yes. He was certain. Once this — whatever this was, had been finished, he would come back and things would be perfect.”

“That would be Kronos,” he said, reluctantly. “A grand concept, but narrow vision, not waiting to think through the possible ramifications.” He tapped his lower lip. “If he had come back to you, had told you that he ruled the world, what would you have said?”

Jehanne shut her eyes. A shudder ran through her. “I would have sent him away. Or I would have left.”

“And gone where?”

She pursed her lips, eyes still shut, and then shook her head. “Somewhere. Anywhere. I don’t know.” She opened her eyes, and stared at him with no evidence of really seeing him. “I would not have stayed with him. I could not have stayed with him.”

The chair felt like a prison. Methos got up and walked back and forth across the room. He folded his arms. “What am I talking about? It wouldn’t have made a difference. He couldn’t have come back to you.”

“Why not?”

“One of us would have figured it out.” He shrugged. “He could hardly have trusted one of us to look after things while he went off by himself. He’d have expected we’d try and take over the show.”

Her head lifted. “And then what?”

He ran both hands through his hair, and swung around to look at her. The eyes. Something in her eyes saw into him. “I don’t know. He couldn’t have kept you a secret. And we — in theory, at least — shared everything.”

“That was why he took Cassandra.”

“And told me he’d give her to Caspian afterwards.”

“And Caspian —”

“Caspian,” he said, and heard his teeth grind on the name. “Was a butcher. He would have taken his time over it, but he would have killed her. He would have killed you, if he’d got to you.”

Each of her words rang softly and coldly like a distant bell. “He could have tried.”

The blood in his veins ran cold for a second, then hot. He met her eyes — he hadn’t intended to — and the hackles rose on the back of his neck. _This is his Jehanne._

“And Silas?”

Words jerked out of his throat. “I think — he might have worshipped you.”

She winced.

He couldn’t resist it, like teasing a cat. “Don’t all women want to be worshipped by a man?”

Jehanne looked at him.

He coughed, and glanced away. “I suppose not.”

“And you?” She’d caught her balance, and picked up his own mocking emphasis.

Methos dropped into the chair, and took her hands in his. The gold ring on her finger read JHESUS MARIA;  he turned it on her finger with his thumb. “Ah, I am not what I was in the reign of the beautiful Cassandra,” he murmured. And then, more clearly, he added, “I grant I never saw a goddess go; when my mistress treads, she treads upon the ground.”

Her laugh startled him. He cocked his head, inquiringly, but she shook her head in response.

“Ah,” he said. “Pillow talk?”

She only shook her head a second time, with a smile.

_So, then. Shakespeare for your pillow, but you won’t say with whom?_ He rubbed his thumb across the back of her hand.  “And if I had asked you to leave him for me?”

“You wouldn’t have.”

He dropped her hands, rested his palms on her shoulders, and leaned forward, staring into her eyes. He let his voice lower, let it soften and wind around her. “Are you that sure?”

Jehanne didn’t flinch. She cocked her head and narrowed her eyes. “Are you not?” she countered. “If I could not change your Kronos into my Elek, how could I change you into a man who would challenge him for me?”

The pain in her voice melted him. He tightened his grip on her shoulders, but she never winced. “No man changes for anyone else. Even if he says he does, he lies. He changes for himself.”

“And he would not have changed for me.”

“I think,” he said, with a shake of his head, “that he changed as much as he could for you.”

“That’s what Cassandra said.”

Methos released her and leaned back in the chair. “Cassandra is a very wise woman.” The shock still ran cold in the marrow of his bones. Kronos with a woman was no great leap of imagination. Kronos with a woman he trusted was more of an unknown mystery. And Kronos here on Holy Ground, in this woman’s bed — He fell back on black humor. “She has bad luck with men, frequently, but everyone has a flaw somewhere.”

The corner of her somber mouth lifted in a half-smile. “Is Duncan MacLeod bad luck?”

“Only if you want to keep your head. Duncan is a relic straight out of the Crusades,” he said. “He’s wasted on the present time. He was meant to be a chieftain, meant to judge and rule. Meant for responsibility.”

“But not you?”

“I had responsibility,” he said. “I’m done with it. Who the hell would want to rule the world?”

“Why would he?”

Methos stilled. He looked into her eyes, found them young and old at the same moment, the shade of a dove’s feathers, but no dove’s softness in them. “Kronos. You ask me why he would want to rule the world?”

“You knew him.”

“Jehanne, it was thousands of years ago. I —”

“Do you remember?”

He made the error of meeting her eyes again, and was trapped. “Yes. I have never forgotten. Kronos wanted power. He wanted — he wanted a perfect world, where his was the ultimate word, the ultimate control. Where no Immortal would need to be afraid of a mortal knowing his secret. A world where his name would live forever. Where he would never be a slave again, where no man could ever make him kneel.”

“How would that be possible today?”

He shook his head. “He thought he could do it through fear. He might have used — well, religion, possibly. Hatred. Gathering all the knowledge about Immortality, maybe — As I said, he was a man of ideas, not solutions. He needed — partners. Subordinates, even though he let us think we were his equals.”

“Why didn’t you try and stop him?”

“Stop the whirlwind,” he said. “Me?”

“Instead, you let Duncan reap the whirlwind.”

There was a note in there that arrested him. He narrowed his eyes. “Do you blame Duncan for Kronos’ death?”

“Is there blame in a Challenge?” she countered. She turned the gold ring on her finger. “I blame Elek for his death.  He didn’t have to — conquer the world.”

“He wouldn’t have been Kronos if he didn’t.”

“Then — why me?”

“Why Sainte Jehanne?”

“I am no saint,” she spat at him. “I was never a saint.”

He leaned forward again, this time forcing her to meet his eyes. “I thought, the first time I really saw you, that it was like warming my hands at a fire, or holding the sun between my hands. I think he wanted that light. He wanted you to belong utterly to him. And you loved him. But — were you in love with him, Jehanne?”

“I have never been in love with anyone but God,” she said, and put her hands over her eyes.

“Then you have your answer.”

She stood up, as abruptly as she’d sat down. “That it was my fault?”

“No. Not your fault. Just that being with you made him believe once more that he could be God as well as play God.”

“And he never believed in God,” she said, then turned away, like a blind woman fumbling for a path.

He almost put out a hand, then didn’t. “Where are you going?”

“To the garden.”

“The gardener is gone,” he said.

She shook her head. “As long as there is a garden, Methos, the gardener lives.”

“You have more faith than most people.”

Her head dropped. At the door, Jehanne paused a moment, then whispered, “Sometimes I think faith is the only thing I will ever really possess.”

*** *** ***

One of the library windows, narrow and its glass pitted with age, looked out onto the garden. Methos stirred himself after an hour or two, and went to look out himself.

Jehanne sat on one of the benches. She held something in her hands: he couldn’t tell from his angle whether the bunch was pansies or snowdrops — or possibly rosemary, considering her facility with Shakespeare.

She stood, as if having come to the end of her thoughts. With the bunch of flowers in her hand, she turned and went back into the house.

*** *** ***

Cassandra found Jehanne changing the sheets on the bed. Freshly-washed linen perfumed the room, overwhelming the familiar lavender and rosemary. “May I help?”

“_Bien sur que oui._” Jehanne went around to the other side and tucked the sheet under the mattress. “It’s easier since I got standard-size mattresses,” she said.

“But I see,” and Cassandra tapped the side of the bedstead, where new wood had been stained to match the original, “that you had to increase the size of the bed itself.”

“Yes. Things change, and thereby force changes in matters connected to them, don’t they?”

Cassandra paused, then tugged the sheet tight and tucked it under before making the tight corner learned in many a hospital. “Was he able to answer your questions?”

“Some of them. He was willing, but in this case, the knowledge, not the flesh, was weak.” Jehanne smoothed the top of the sheet. After a second, she looked up, and managed a smile. “I think perhaps he is as baffled by this as you and I.”

“I’ve never thought of him as being baffled by anything.” Cassandra took the top sheet and shook it out. “I thought of the Horseman as swallowing the world, blotting out the sun.” She squinted at the afternoon sun. “But that was when the world was much smaller, wasn’t it?”

“Or maybe just simpler.”

 Cassandra shook out a pillow, then pulled a case onto it. The image came to her, Methos yielding under her words, slowly taking shape again, like the pillow. Not denying the accusations, but stolidly insisting that things had changed. “Jehanne?”

Jehanne pulled a bright red blanket up over the white sheet. “Yes?”

“I think it is time for me to go.”

Jehanne froze, with another blanket still unfolded in her hands. Silence thickened the air. Then a flick of strong arms opened the blanket, and Jehanne began to spread it over the mattress, moving quickly and neatly, as if the motion somehow hurt. “_Certainment_. As you like.”

Cassandra turned away from the window. Jehanne’s face was not visible, as she bent over the bed. “I don’t mean to — run off and leave you. I’ve brought you enough trouble.”

A shrug answered. “It’s no trouble.”

No. Not ‘it’s no trouble’, but ‘_ça ne fait rien’_ — it makes nothing — said dully, in reflex.

“Jehanne?”

She shifted to tuck the blanket under the foot of the bed, her body moving in that mechanical rhythm that came to a task done a thousand times before. The bleak late winter sky held more color than her face. “I’ve thought of it myself, you know. I could have stopped him. Before Bordeaux. He was here. I could have stopped him.”

Cassandra took the few steps needed to round the bed. She put her hand on Jehanne’s forearm, then, when the strong arms and hands continued to work, wrapped her fingers around her friend’s cold hands and pulled her around. “Jhenette. That’s not what I meant. This has nothing —” She stopped, because that was untrue. It did have to do with Kronos — but not with Jehanne.

“I can’t count how many times he lay with his head in my lap.” Jehanne stared at the wall. She shuddered. “Sisera and Jael.”

“Jehanne.”

“I’ve held a sword and stood behind him. It would never have occurred to him…”

“Jehanne!”

“I could have taken his head —”

“Stop! Jehanne. Stop this. You didn’t know what he was.”

Another shudder rippled, and Jehanne’s hands shut on Cassandra’s for a few painful seconds. “I knew he was not a good man.”

This time she grabbed Jehanne’s shoulders, and shook her. “If we killed everyone who was not good at some point in their lives, there’d be no one, mortal or Immortal, left on Earth.” She pushed strands of hair from Jehanne’s face; they were damp with sweat. “How do we judge?” The words dangled in that stillness, and she listened to them, then said, “How do I judge?”

Her forehead furrowed. Jehanne reached up to rest her left hand on Cassandra’s right. The gold ring on her forefinger glinted in the sunlight. “Can the leopard change his spots?”

Duncan had said, _I want him to live_. Methos had said she suffered from Stockholm syndrome, a modern name for an old problem. Could Duncan have been friends with Death? _Duncan never lived through that time, in that place. There were no knights, then. No Lancelot, no Galahad. And Camelot had not lived to become a myth_. _The Goddess of the Underworld murdered her own sister and could only be coaxed to let her return to the living by the offering of a consort… The gods killed and raped and murdered in those days. Do the gods of today do so? _ “Maybe. Maybe he can.”

Jehanne’s mouth twisted. She chewed on her lower lip; her fingers tangled in Cassandra’s sleeve, drawing the cloth taut. “Then what else could I have done? What did I fail to do?”

“What —” Cassandra dragged the smaller woman around the bed and pushed her down onto it. She pushed her own hair back, then took a grip again on Jehanne’s shoulder. “I was not speaking of Kronos. Jehanne, you could not have changed him. I don’t think he could have changed himself — I don’t think it ever occurred to him to think of changing anything but his methods. You yourself said he was not a good man.”

“But when he was with me, he was different.”

Cassandra caught a glimpse of light, a vision of a man with a scarred face walking away from a door, the face changing as he walked, taking steps away from light into darkness. “But when he needed to be Kronos, he left you. Didn’t he?”

Jehanne rubbed her bloodshot eyes. “Maybe that was it. He would come back to me — for me — but he never stayed. And he never said why.” Her eyes closed. She shook her head. “And I never asked.”

“You couldn’t have lived with the answer.”

“No.”

“And you needed him.”

Jehanne sat down on the bed and ran a hand through her hair, tucking the short pieces back behind her ears. “Yes. Yes, I think I did.”

Cassandra worked through the puzzle a moment, fitting pieces together in  her head. “But I can live with the answers Methos gives me,” she said, finally. “_Mal vit qui ne s’amende_.[[16]](http://archiveofourown.org/javascripts/tiny_mce/plugins/paste/pasteword.htm?1274712429#_ftn16)”

“You have never been a fool, Cassie,” Jehanne said, and laid her warm hand against Cassandra’s face.

“No. No, but I have been a Fury.” She remembered the scent of the vapors in the temple, rising from the stone and earth, the Voice rising in her, racking her skeleton, the ache of words waiting to be spoken raking at her lungs, digging their way out of her throat. “I have seen things and prophesied things — I have sent ravens to pick out the eyes of the dead and bring me back the warnings hidden in their souls. And I have never forgotten where I came from, and I have never forgiven its loss.”

Jehanne tilted her head to one side, a raven with grey eyes, like the Morrigan. “_If you bring forth what is in you, what you bring forth will save you._”

Cassandra nodded. Jehanne had read all of the text, then… “_If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you_.” The Voice rose up in her again. She reached out and grabbed Jehanne’s arm. “I do not think that I will meet McLeod again. Or if I do, you will have seen him first. You must tell him that. Tell him what the texts of Nag Hammurabi said. He will need that.”

And of course Jehanne did not ask why. She only nodded. She took Cassandra’s hand in her, and kissed her palm. “Of course I will tell him. If, indeed, I should meet him.”

“Goddess, if only I still had your faith.”

“You have it,” Jehanne said. “It’s tattered, a little, but no one has never questioned God.”

“Not even you?”

“Not even me.”

Cassandra leaned forward and kissed her. “Have you seen Methos since you spoke to him?”

“No, but I think he might be in the garden.”

She turned, then stopped. “Are you going to ask me?”

Jehanne’s voice turned soft. “You will know what to say to him when you start. Then you will know your answer when he answers. I don’t see the future, Cassandra. I’m no prophet.”

“But you are, whether or not you believe it, a good woman, Jhenette.” Cassandra left the door open.

*** *** ***

He was, in fact, in the garden, sitting on one of the worn stone benches and nibbling a handful of mint as he drank a cup of coffee. He squinted up at her. “You’re not helping Jehanne clean.”

“And you’re not in the library reading,” she said. “I’d like to talk to you. Do you mind?”

Something in her voice must have made him wary. Methos finished off the mint, then slowly got to his feet. He set the cup down on the bench. “That depends on whether or not you’ve finally decided to take my head.” He stood there, legs apart, immovable.

Cassandra copied his dry tone. “Do you think it would do me any good?”

“I admit to prejudice on the subject.” He offered the tight, mocking smile and open hands. “I leave the decision to you.”

She put her hands on her hips. “No. I don’t think it would do me good. It might in fact do me some harm, having you and whatever you’ve collected over the years in my head.”

That stopped him a moment. His eyes narrowed, and he scrutinized her for some time before he said, “Cassandra, I beg your pardon for asking, but — have you ever killed?”

She avoided his eyes. “Of course I have.”

He glanced up at the overhead glass a moment, then said, one word carefully separated from another, “Have you ever taken a head?”

She turned the question over in her head. No loopholes in it. “No.”

Methos rubbed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his long nose. In tones that suggested he was struggling not to sound judgmental, he said, “And you went after Kronos? What the hell were you thinking?”

“I was thinking of stopping him for all time!”

“By taking **his** Quickening?” He took another, deeper breath. “Look, I don’t know if you could have beaten him or not. I wasn’t any too certain MacLeod could. But — what if you had?”

“What if I had? He’d be dead.”

“And in your soul. Have you ever seen a Dark Quickening?”

She’d heard of them. “No.”

“I have.”

“And you’re here to describe it?”

“It was Duncan. I suppose he was so — grounded in himself that he was able to overcome it. He damn near didn’t overcome it. He did, in fact, kill a friend, a good man, a man who in any other circumstances might have been able to talk him down. That’s why I believed he could handle Kronos and all those Immortals Kronos had absorbed. But him? As your first Quickening?”

“Is that why you didn’t take his head? The chance of being overshadowed?”

That stopped him. He looked past her, lips pressed together, as if holding in words. “Perhaps… but that’s too easy an answer.” He shook his head. “What right did I have to take his head? To play judge, jury, and executioner to someone who had committed the same sorts of crimes which I had? Besides — I had never beaten my brother at anything. What makes you think I could have?”

“I think —” she said, levelly, “that if you had really wanted to, you could have. I don’t think that there is anything you have ever really wanted that you haven’t acquired.”

His expression turned mask-like, the color bleeding out of it. Though still looking at her, he did not see her. His hands knotted on each other, as blanched as his face. Methos moistened his lips with his tongue, then managed two flat, dead words. “You’re wrong.”

It said everything. She said, “What was her name?”

“Alexa.”

“Named for the conqueror…” she said softly.

He snorted, and the sound held no ridiculous notes. “Poe’s Conqueror.”

She frowned, blind on the reference.

“The Conqueror Worm,” he said.

Cassandra nodded. “Even Death can’t conquer death?”

He shook his head. His eyes turned away from her, the long mobile fingers working on each other, knuckles still white.

Jehanne’s voice echoed in her ears. _‘The appalling strangeness of the mercy of God… Knowing cruelty so well… I do not think Cassandra is capable of it.’_  A kind judgment, like most of Jehanne’s. Cassandra leaned forward and put her hand on Death’s hand. “I’m sorry.”

His eyes snapped back to her face. His dark eyes glistened, a lake at night with no stars to light it. Then he said. “Thank you.”

And it was only a hand.

“Tell me about her,” Cassandra said, “Methos.”

“Alexa?”

“Yes.”

After a minute, he sat back down on the bench and picked up the coffee. She sat down next to him.

She watched him, trying to decide if she were divining by anthroposcopy, physiognomy, or by onychomancy, and then realized she was divining by sciomancy: by the shadows on his face and the ghost of a dead girl. The eloquent Methos; the dangerous, violent Methos; the charming, deceptive Methos in whom there was no truth, disappeared into the shadows and into the ghosts of women he’d known.

Mortals, after all, died. In a greater tragedy, some died unnaturally young and all of their lives vanished, lost in time and the deaths of those who had remembered them.

He told her how Alexa’s beauty had been revealed to him like a peacock’s tail slowly expanding, sweeping outwards and watching with a multitude of eyes as she accompanied him to England and her great ancient henges, to France and its battlefields, going East into Italy and then to Santorini, which she loved as if she’d been born there. Then to mainland Greece — to Methos the apex of the ancient world — where they climbed the Acropolis together, and looking out over that world, the young mortal woman cried.

“So many years,” he said. “So many monuments, so empty. I found a spot that looked familiar, but I couldn’t be sure if it were where the sacred cave had been. I had brought a bottle of mead anyway, and poured a libation. To propitiate the Furies.” His head dropped, and he held his palms out, staring at the lines as if searching for his own divination. “I was never a god,” he said. “And there were no gods to answer me.”

Later, when all the small lovely things of the earth could no longer lift her eyes, or her spirits, he took her to a small hospital on a mountain in Switzerland, where at least the air was sweet and the drugs kept pain a ghost of its own.

“And I watched her die.”

Cancer. As old as man himself. _How many times…_ “The eater of flesh,” she said.

His head lifted. He searched her face as if the words might hold an answer.

“That was the name of the demon we believed brought the wasting sickness. I could tell you, even then, the difference between that and phthisis.”

“Did your people treat it?”

“Unlike the Egyptians, yes. With good food and clean water, hot vapors from the holy springs — those patients had to stay and not travel, and one of us would stay until the year rolled around and our people returned.” She looked off past him, remembering the oasis and the loneliness. “I think once I still had a living patient when the others returned.”

He sighed, and ran a hand back and forth through his hair until it stood on end like a cockatoo’s crest. “I even tried to steal the Methuselah Stone,” he said.

Words escaped. “It was a myth.”

“I saw it!” he said, and straightened, staring at her. “Rebecca —”

“Rebecca believed the power was in the stone,” Cassandra said. “The power was Rebecca’s, absorbed by the stone.”

“And Luther took her head.”

“Who took his?”

Methos’ mouth twisted in the half-smile that had once made sweat run cold down her back. “MacLeod, who else?”

“And the stone?”

Methos frowned. “If it’s a myth, does it matter?”

“Myths have power,” she said. “You don’t need me to tell you that.”

“No, but — the stone was knocked from our hands.”

“Whose?”

He shook his head, then he stuck his finger in his coffee. He grimaced; obviously it was cold, but he drank it anyway. “I don’t know. Mine, Amanda’s, Duncan’s… It didn’t matter. It was gone. And if it was a myth, anyway…” He shrugged.

“Whoever took Luther’s head has probably absorbed Rebecca’s power, then.”

“MacLeod.” A sudden laugh punctuated that. “You think he knows it?”

“I have no idea. I didn’t come by my ability by taking a head, remember?”

His eyebrows twitched: not amusement this time, just the usual Methos wryness at life. He nodded. “Practice,” he said. “But, if you can, I’d avoid the act itself.”

She pulled back a little, affronted. “You don’t think I can take a head?”

“I don’t think,” he said, and the kindness was as unexpected as a heated blanket in a cold room, “that you’d like the effect it might have.”

“I see.” She sat in silence for a moment, letting the world fall into place around her. Then she stood.

Methos remained still, staring at his empty cup.

She leaned forward. As he glanced up, she took his head between her hands and kissed his forehead, then said, in the first language they had shared, “Go in peace, son of gods. The Erinyes forgive you your crimes and sentence you to live.”

“All three of you?” No mockery this time, just his ancient eyes meeting hers without guile, without guards, without masks, weary and bitter.

She gave him the kindness he had given her at last. “Amanda already gave her vote, when she went back to Paris. Among the three, one speaks for all, and all abide by the verdict. We have no further judgment to pass on you.”

He folded his hands on the desk and bowed his head to her. “A kindness of ravens. Thank you, Cassandra.”

*** *** ***

Methos had slept in the guesthouse for the last time, eaten breakfast in the abbey for the last time. He had taken the duffel bag and the clothing Jehanne had offered him, abruptly touched her face, then turned and walked down the road, away from the town and into the fields.

That night, Jehanne held Cassandra in her arms for the last time.

The next morning, while the sun shone bright and the skies clear of clouds, she kissed Cassandra goodbye at the train station. “You know where I’ll be for the next few years,” she said.

Cassandra nodded. “I will be back, Jehanne. I promise.” She rested the tip of her index finger against Jehanne’s lower lip a second, and her dark eyes turned darker. Her voice took on the echoing quality of prophecy. “You’ll be safe here another ten years. Then you’ll move, for a while.”

“And then?”

The distance between them vanished. Cassandra hugged her. In Jehanne’s ear, she said, “Prophecy is like your voices. Very rarely is it specific.”

“Well, then. Go with God, Cassandra.”

“And you.”

When she drove into the cleared space in front of the abbey, Jehanne sat in the car a moment, staring at the untrimmed hedge lining it. Another chore.

But not now.

She made coffee and sat at the kitchen table, staring out at the garden.

The abbey felt empty, without other feet on the flagging, with the library and garden empty.. She lingered over coffee until impatience pushed her to go outside. Not into the garden, sheltered and pampered, but into the front where the road led down to the world.

Wind blew through the pines, rustled the leaves of the oak trees. The abbey grounds felt like a second skin now, empty of other Immortals, empty of anything except the day’s work waiting to be done.

Among those daily tasks was the repeatedly rescheduled maintenance on the Citroën-Station. She dug out the toolbox, and the replacement equipment —  purchased a year earlier and carefully vacuum-sealed until needed.

The first sparkplug of the four did not give at all with her first pull. Too long since the last tune-up. Jehanne wiped sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand, looked at the streaks of black now missing from her skin, and realized she again looked like a commando in camouflage. She fumbled for the can of lubricant, then almost dropped it.

Recognition swept over her, a strong signature, redolent of age, like the breath of the ocean deep in the Pacific or the wind on the cliffs of Vesuvius. For a second, it stunned her, and then St. Margaret whispered to her, soothing and certain. _You’ve felt this before. You know him._

Another few seconds. She remembered Methos saying, _I remember Vesuvius erupting in 3580. Before the common era, as they say._ She relaxed, then turned to her attention to the balky plug.

Boots crunched on gravel. The wind carried his scent to her.

She tightened the wrench another notch and tried rocking it. It gave a little; she sighed, then relaxed her pull, still trying not to break the sparkplug or its seat.

Something solid plopped onto the gravel. A long arm in a familiar leather jacket reached over her shoulder. “Here. Your hands aren’t big enough.” Methos shifted a little, leaning into her, and turned the wrench. The sparkplug lifted out of its seat, spraying wisps of lubricant. “Do you always let strange Immortals walk up behind you?”

“This is Holy Ground.”

“You could be dragged off Holy Ground unconscious.” After a pause, he added, “Or conscious — you’re not exactly a large encumbrance.”

“True,” she said. “But I knew you wouldn’t.”

“You knew it was me?”

She nodded. “Can you get that second plug?”

“Move out of the way.”

Jehanne ducked under his arm and stepped back. Methos pulled the second plug, and then the two remaining.

“When did you last get this tuned up?” He turned around, and grinned. “You have grease all over your face, did you know?”

“I suspected as much.” She patted the Citroën’s bonnet before admitting, “Five years or so.”

He shook his head. From his pocket, he produced a clean white handkerchief, and held it out.

She wiped as much grease from her forehead and nose as possible. “Thank you.”

“Why were you so sure it was me?”

Jehanne, in turn, grinned at him. “They always said _la Pucelle_ was a little strange.”

He snorted.

“And you, you are no stranger. You are Amanda’s friend, and you have been my guest.”

The amusement in his face vanished. “May I impose on your hospitality again?”

“It is no imposition.” She badly wanted to ask why, but held her tongue.

He looked at the Citroën’s engine. “Where are the replacements?”

“In the tool box,” she said. “Behind you.”

“I’ll finish this.” Methos took off the jacket, then rolled up his shirt sleeves. “I need a little more rest, I suppose, or a place to meditate.” He did not look at her when he added, “And I would like to hear something of my brother that might make me think a little more kindly of him.”

Jehanne leaned against the driver’s door. “It might take some time, to tell you what I remember. And I cannot say to you that all of my memories are good, even though he was good to me.”

His dark eyes came up, and the wave of sorrow borne on his many years hit her like a blast of cold wind. “I know. But it’s better than what I remember.”

“Then I will be content to tell you. You are always welcome here, Methos.”

A question came into his eyes but stayed there.

She said, “Not for him. For yourself. I can only take a person for what they are, not for what they were, or whom they knew.”

The sorrow did not completely vanish, but he smiled a little, before he said, “You quote a number of things, I’ve noticed.”

“So many wiser people have said what I thought so much better.”

He nodded. After a moment, he said, “_Maybe there’s a God above, but all I ever learned from love is how to shoot at someone who outdrew you_[[17]](http://archiveofourown.org/javascripts/tiny_mce/plugins/paste/pasteword.htm?1274712429#_ftn17).”

Jehanne frowned. She frowned for several seconds, then spoke, pulling words from her memory, “It’s another version, isn’t it? Leonard Cohen.”

“Yes.”

With more confidence, she said, “_I used to live alone before I knew you. I’ve seen your flag on the marble arch_,” and then she looked into the dark eyes that spoke of so much darkness known, “_but love is not a victory march, it’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah_.”

He nodded before he turned back to the engine.

After another moment, she rubbed his nearest shoulder, and he stopped with his hands in the machinery. The tension under her fingers relaxed before the long muscles in his forearms tightened with the wrench. She took her hand away.

The wrench banged against metal and then the ground. Methos swung to her and caught both of her dirty hands. “There’s another quote.”

“What?”

“_Evil indeed is the man who has not one woman to mourn him_.”

The structure sounded Victorian, or poetic. Jehanne shook her head. “I don’t recognize that.”

“Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The Hound of the Baskervilles. Sherlock Holmes. Actually, a comment made by his friend Watson, who was an incurable sentimentalist.”

“I’ve never read him.”

“Something to add to your library, then.” He glanced down at their joined hands. He let go, then stooped to pick up the wrench.

“I can use more books. Spring’s coming,” she said. “Spring always gives me hope. And the urge to read. Things look more hopeful in the spring.”

“Yes.” He straightened, looked down the rutted road, and then turned back to smile at her. “Yes, they do, O Kindly One.”

She shook her head. “I was never anything but Jehanne d’Arc.”

“My dear girl,” he said, and for the first time he sounded as old as his reminiscences suggested. “You were never just Joan of Arc, any more than I was really just ‘a guy’.” His voice lightened. “I would like see spring come here. With you.”

“Would you rather stay in the abbey? Or the guesthouse?”

“The abbey, if you don’t mind.”

“Can I leave you to finish this if I go and wash up and prepare a guest room?”

He nodded.

As she walked away, he called after her, “But I’m not going to offer to milk Pluie!”

Jehanne laughed.

 

* * *

[[1]](http://archiveofourown.org/javascripts/tiny_mce/plugins/paste/pasteword.htm?1274712429#_ftnref1)   Little Gidding, T.S. Eliot, from The Four Quartets

[[2]](http://archiveofourown.org/javascripts/tiny_mce/plugins/paste/pasteword.htm?1274712429#_ftnref2)  Well, yes, of course.

[[3]](http://archiveofourown.org/javascripts/tiny_mce/plugins/paste/pasteword.htm?1274712429#_ftnref3)   What’s done is done.

[[4]](http://archiveofourown.org/javascripts/tiny_mce/plugins/paste/pasteword.htm?1274712429#_ftnref4)   Who lives by the sword dies by the sword.

[[5]](http://archiveofourown.org/javascripts/tiny_mce/plugins/paste/pasteword.htm?1274712429#_ftnref5)  Don’t be upset.

[[6]](http://archiveofourown.org/javascripts/tiny_mce/plugins/paste/pasteword.htm?1274712429#_ftnref6)   my husband

[[7]](http://archiveofourown.org/javascripts/tiny_mce/plugins/paste/pasteword.htm?1274712429#_ftnref7)  To be sure

[[8]](http://archiveofourown.org/javascripts/tiny_mce/plugins/paste/pasteword.htm?1274712429#_ftnref8)   Fathead , literally ‘thick’

[[9]](http://archiveofourown.org/javascripts/tiny_mce/plugins/paste/pasteword.htm?1274712429#_ftnref9)  thunderbolt

[[10]](http://archiveofourown.org/javascripts/tiny_mce/plugins/paste/pasteword.htm?1274712429#_ftnref10)  She says first: ‘Affection blinds reason’, and then ‘Once a thief, always a thief.’

[[11]](http://archiveofourown.org/javascripts/tiny_mce/plugins/paste/pasteword.htm?1274712429#_ftnref11) ‘Lament for the Makers’, _Anonymous Medieval_

[[12]](http://archiveofourown.org/javascripts/tiny_mce/plugins/paste/pasteword.htm?1274712429#_ftnref12) Sonnet 130 – William Shakespeare

[[13]](http://archiveofourown.org/javascripts/tiny_mce/plugins/paste/pasteword.htm?1274712429#_ftnref13)  “The habit doesn’t suit the monk” — or, don’t judge a book by its cover.

[[14]](http://archiveofourown.org/javascripts/tiny_mce/plugins/paste/pasteword.htm?1274712429#_ftnref14) Affection blinds reason.

[[15]](http://archiveofourown.org/javascripts/tiny_mce/plugins/paste/pasteword.htm?1274712429#_ftnref15)  Who am I? What am I? Why has God abandoned me?

[[16]](http://archiveofourown.org/javascripts/tiny_mce/plugins/paste/pasteword.htm?1274712429#_ftnref16)     Only a fool never changes her mind.

[[17]](http://archiveofourown.org/javascripts/tiny_mce/plugins/paste/pasteword.htm?1274712429#_ftnref17)  “Hallelujah”, by Leonard Cohen


End file.
